


hand covers bruise

by grimgrace



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 20:04:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/678379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grimgrace/pseuds/grimgrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Klaus gets put in a box. (But he gets out pretty quickly). The only choice left is to scatter. (AU from S3 finale, very Caroline-focused, mentions of Forwood and Caroline/OC). NOW COMPLETE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hand covers bruise

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own anything that you recognise. All rights go to the respective owners, including characters, setting, quotes, etc. I make no claims to this property. The title of the story is a quote from Trent Raznor and Atticus Ross song, 'Hand Covers Bruise' and I strongly recommend listening to their music (or just the entire The Social Network soundtrack, really). 
> 
> Song quotes for each part are from, in order: Radiohead, Concrete Blonde, Metallica and the Turtles. 
> 
> a/n: fair warning now. This is a Caroline centred story. While it is ultimately a Klaroline story (they are endgame hear me roar,) there will be mentions of Forwood as well as a lot of Caroline/OC (some explicit). It is canon divergent as of the end of season three, but other than that I tried to stay as true to the characters as possible. There will be three parts, and it will probably end up being about fifteen thousand words when I'm finished with it. All characters will feature.

/Part One/

"I want you to notice, when I'm not around. You're so fucking special. I wish I was special."

Creep - Radiohead

.

Klaus gets put in a box.

(But he gets out pretty quickly).

.

.

The only choice left is to scatter. Elena's dead which means they've nothing left to bargain with, nothing to convince him to stave off the fury. The Salvatore boys take Elena, even while they wait for her to finish her transition, and Jeremy—because she won't leave without him—and vanish, telling no one of their destination because there's too much risk of it.

Caroline is all too aware of the part she played. They have no time—barely time to think, even, breathe. She finds Bonnie and then Tyler and Matt, because they're all they have left. They've been together for long enough—they can survive.

Tyler has broken the sire bond but he's still connected. He has contacts enough to know that Klaus is awake now and on his way.

(no time, no time, no time).

Caroline sells the bracelet that Klaus gave her—far too little for what it's worth, she thinks, but she's got five grand in her pocket now, and that's what she needs. She orders her mum a ticket out of the country, (to Australia, but she'll share that knowledge with no one) under a fake name. (Willow Rosenberg, because there'll always be a part of her that wishes this was just some fiction, distanced from her by the glass of a television screen). She has five minutes to say goodbye, and then her mother is gone too. (Ty's mum goes with her—Anya Harris, because it's still kind of funny, right?) Matt writes a letter to his mum, and Bonnie hides her father with a spell.

Matt's truck is at the bottom of the river, so Bonnie gets them a hire car. It's slow—slower than if Tyler and Caroline were running on foot—but they're not travelling alone and they won't leave their friends. (They're all each other has).

They head to New York. The city is (giant, huge, mega) easy to get lost in and they pass the first three vacant motels before they stop because that's something Matt learnt from a CSI episode he watched once. They stop by a butcher to grab some pigs blood (yeah, ew) for Caroline and Tyler, and then they lay low for a couple of days.

Tyler keeps his network open, and they learn through those channels exactly what has become of that.

The Gilbert house is burned down. The high school ransacked and the Lockwood house torn apart. Caroline's house is broken into as well—rumours are flying about where the families have vanished.

The mansion that Klaus lives in is empty and the hybrids that Klaus have left are being sent all over the country.

It is immediately clear that they are being hunted.

Tyler's last contact—a hybrid that Tyler got to know fairly well—tells him this is it. No more help will come from his end. Tyler hangs up the phone and severs their last connection.

They stay up all night making plans. Bonnie and Matt have enough adrenalin in their systems that they can do so—and Tyler and Caroline have no problem. They learn that Elena's cell phone has been disconnected—as well as Jeremy's—when they try to call her and realise, a little late, that they should probably get rid of theirs as well.

Tyler wants to crush all the phones immediately, but Caroline makes him pause. Takes out her phone and writes down all the numbers she has just in case—in case she can call her mother or if Elena's phone miraculously comes back to life.

(She knows exactly how stupid she's being when she slips her phone's sim card into her pocket).

Then Tyler crushes all the phones under his boot and then he and Caroline throw them from the roof. They fly hundreds of metres in one direction (so that Klaus can't find them all and trace them to the middle of a circle).

When the sun rises, Caroline heads outside to buy new phones, while Matt and Bonnie finally rest a little bit. Tyler watches the room, protecting it. There was some debate over who got which job, but they decide in the end that Tyler is better equipped to deal with any hybrids that track them to the hotel.

Their worries are rendered useless however, when Caroline returns without incident. (She's bought four new phones, a couple of the groceries they definitely need, new clothes for all of them. She's grabbed some stolen some blood bags, and some hair dye just in case. It severely cuts into her bracelet fund, but she feels a sense of vindictive pleasure at Klaus's expense. At least the money they're using to survive is coming (technically) from his pocket).

It's only been half a day since they dismantled their old phones, but when Caroline slips her sim into the new untraceable mobile, she has a new text message.

The phone doesn't recognise the number, but she recognises the words immediately.

I'll wait for you, love.

.

Caroline realises her stupidity at once, takes out the phone card again and snaps it in two. Then she flushes it down the toilet for extra measure, before replacing the brand new one.

.

They can't stay in New York for long. It's too close, to easy to search. (You know, it's got one of those grid patterns and shit). Besides, Tyler isn't sure how long his once friend is going to hold out on the information, and they're relatively certain that the phone they'd used to call him would have given him the zip code.

But Matt doesn't have a passport, so international travel is off the table, at least for now. Tyler, again, says he knows a guy (a friend of Mason's from before) who could get one for him.

Bonnie snatches the hair dye and the girls clothes from the table and tugs Caroline into the bathroom. Caroline hadn't really looked at the colours, just shoved all her options into her shopping cart—unsure if any other hair colour would work with Bonnie's skin tone.

Bonnie doesn't seem to mind about herself for the moment, shoving Caroline's head over the basin and wetting it without remorse. She massages the brunette colour in with ease, pushing to the roots. "This won't last long with your hair colour." Is the only thing she says. "We'll have to redo it soon." Caroline nods as best she can from the inside of the basin.

Bonnie pulls back eventually, to twist Caroline's wet hair up and pin it there, leaving the dye to settle. "We're changing our clothes as well." Bonnie says, not looking at Caroline and instead staring at the clothes. (It's all generic stuff, two pairs of black jeans and a couple of dark hoodies). "We need to really disappear."

Using some scissors, Bonnie rips and tears at the denim of the jeans. It gives them the grunge look in the end — the one that Caroline has always hated — but it's a big change from Caroline or Bonnie's ordinary style. The hoodies stay unchanged though, so Bonnie just gets up to rinse out Caroline's hair.

Once her hair is dry, Bonnie notices—with the first giggle since they heard about what happened at the bridge—that they've forgotten Caroline's eyebrows and she has to squeeze what she can from the empty bottle to remedy that. She's delicate with the application now, using an ear bud to gently press the dye to the hair above Caroline's eye.

She steps back and smiles a little shakily. "I know there's not much we can do with my hair." She says eventually. "But you grabbed a couple of pink and blue colours, so I figured we could give me streaks. I'll be super alternative, yeah?"

Caroline smiles as best she can but she can see from her reflection that it comes out a grimace. Bonnie gives her about the same calibre look in return.

Still, when they've washed the rest of the dye out (the pink and blue mixing with the brown of Caroline's eyebrows) they look fair enough. Caroline's got a bit stained on the corner of her brow, but it's definitely not too shabby and she can wash it away with a bit of a scrub in a couple of days.

Bonnie pulls on her jeans first, then the hoodie, hiding away the deep blue of the shirt she's wearing. It's kind of eerie to look at her—because she's dark and kind of gothic and that was never a look meant for such a lovely person. But Caroline follows suit, ultimately because all she can hear in her head is 'full of light' and 'I'll wait for you'. She doesn't want to be the person that he's looking for, and if this is how she drowns her old self out then it will have to do.

When she and Bonnie finally emerge from the bathroom, Tyler and Matt are wearing their clothes as well. They've already gotten the memo on changing style—their clothes are dark and messy, unclean and torn in places (not quite the fashion statement like Caroline and Bonnie—theirs looks more like the result of wear and tear). Caroline could probably believe that the guys have owned these clothes all their life—if she hadn't been the one who'd bought then a couple of hours earlier.

Both boys look like they don't know what to say when they see the girls, and they seem to decide that not saying anything is the best way to go. Instead, they hide their shocked looks and point to the two dollar map Caroline had snatched out of her mother's car.

Tyler wants to go to California. Matt wants to head to Texas or Kansas. Bonnie and Caroline decide that somewhere like Arizona is probably the best place for them. Definitely somewhere on the other side of the country. Staying on this coast is too close, sets their teeth on edge. He's here, he's close and he's fucking looking for them.

They get the majority though, in the end, so they leave that night, (Tyler drives) and head in that direction.

(Caroline tries and fails to think about where Elena is right now, if she's even transitioned if she's still around—alive isn't a word she can use, is it? — and how she'll probably never see her friend again).

(At least it keeps her mind from the 'I'll wait for you' though. That's all she can ask right now).

.

They don't really stop at all. Tyler and Caroline take the major driving shifts—sleeping with the other drives and such, and Bonnie and Matt drive when they find they really need something to do other than sit around.

When they get to Columbus, Ohio, Tyler has been driving for nine hours and is really done his dash—so they pull over to get some fresh air for a moment before Caroline takes the next couple of hours.

(Tyler and Caroline share a blood bag, because leaving a trail of burgled hospitals is really not a way to lie low and they need to conserve what they have now. Bonnie and Matt get McDonalds).

Caroline ducks into the bathroom for a moment, and doesn't recognise her own reflection for a moment. The dark brown locks frame her face more obviously than the blonde did, contrasting against her pale skin. She doesn't let it affect her though and just washes her hand, makes sure there's no blood on her teeth and returns to the car.

Tyler has already fallen asleep in the back of the car, and Matt's just paying for the fuel he's filled the car up with. Bonnie calls shotgun and tells Caroline that she'll stay awake as long as she can, just so that Caroline has someone to talk to.

(This is good. Caroline really can't be in her own head for too long right now—her neurotic past self is teetering on the edge, ready to take control at a moment's weakness and if she lets herself think about it too much then she'll cave in a major way).

Still, they end up driving for a couple of minutes without anything to say. Matt has slipped in the back, lifted Tyler's legs to rest on his lap, pushing his seat back a little and plugging in his headphones (it's Coldplay, Caroline can hear it clear enough).

"She'll be fine." Is eventually what Caroline starts their conversation with. She knows it's where Bonnie's mind has been hovering in this time, because it's exactly the same place hers has been. "Damon and Stefan will take care of her." She pauses, shoots Bonnie a meaningful look. "And Jeremy as well."

Bonnie lets the words hover in the air for a moment, totally still, before she nods her head. She swallows, and Caroline can see wetness gloss over her eyes.

"They're probably out of the country by now." Bonnie says, her voice soft and haggard.

Probably. Stefan and Damon know better to hang around—especially when most of Klaus's anger will be directed at them. For the moment, Caroline, Matt, Tyler and Bonnie are just the friends who got in the way.

(Caroline wonders what he's going to do to Rebekah).

"Hopefully," Caroline says. It's easier to be positive now, than negative. — even if the depression of reality is overwhelming right now, it's easy to remind themselves that Elena being out of the country is far safer than still in the country. "Stefan and Damon will take care of them."

Caroline resolutely does not think about how Stefan has promised to take care of her. He'd told her he would teach her how to deal with this sort of thing—how to deal with living forever.

But he's gone now—he chose Elena even if she couldn't chose him (not really) — and Caroline will have to deal with reality on her own.

(It's the last time Bonnie and Caroline mention Elena, Jeremy, or the Salvatore's for a long time, even if they don't know it yet).

.

It takes another twenty nine hours to get to Tucson, where they eventually decide to stop. Caroline's got just enough money left to combine with Matt's and buy them a small little four bedroom in a subtle part of town. They don't worry about the danger warnings they hear because, come on, they're vampires—and after a day Tyler has scared off anyone who might have come looking for a fight.

Caroline gets a job at a local pub. Bonnie starts working at the public library and she and Matt enrol back in school. Tyler gets them all new ID's.

Caroline thinks for a reeling moment about her mother in Australia and her best friend, dead and abroad. She thinks of her family house, torn apart, and of Caroline Forbes, the seventeen year old who died in her hospital bed, the unfortunate casualty of someone else's grudge.

She's Claire Foster (who moved here with her friends Max, Bethany and Tom) and she can lay low for now.

.

.

They stay in Arizona for two years, in the end. The life of Claire Foster isn't a hard one to live, and Bonnie even finds herself a boyfriend. (He's tall and sweet and really likes reading books). She swore of magic when they arrived and hasn't seemed tempted since. But life at the bar and in their small house gets boring, after a while, and Bonnie and Matt start looking older.

(Not in a way that's obvious to anyone but them—but Bonnie's hair grows where Caroline's doesn't—regrowth apparently isn't an issue for someone who's hair stopped growing a long time ago. Matt has to shave in the morning and Tyler doesn't).

But Caroline—Claire—wakes up one morning and realises that she really doesn't want to see her best friend grow old before her eyes and no matter how selfish that is, she isn't going to hang around to do that.

Also, that Claire Foster's life isn't the one that Caroline Forbes wanted ever.

It's been two years though, and they've heard nothing. Nothing from any hybrids, or Damon or Stefan. Caroline texted her mother (I'm okay and I love you) which had earned her a message in return (message fail: #231: this number is no longer is service). (Caroline's not okay).

Klaus hasn't found them, though, and Caroline thinks that maybe it's time that she used that to her advantage. His anger must have ebbed away if he stopped looking for her.

I'll wait for you.

Tyler comes with her because he is about as comfortable with the growing age difference as she is. They tell Bonnie and Matt one night, after dinner—and there's tears and sadness but also acceptance because Bonnie and Matt are human and Tyler and Caroline are really not.

(Matt's met a girl as well. Her name is Sophie and she's got a sweet round face and a nice smile — Caroline's totally prettier than her — they're cute together but Caroline doesn't want to be there when they get married and start talking kids. It's a life she could have had and that kind of fucking tears at her).

So she and Tyler leave. They leave Tom and Claire there mostly — in everything except name. Caroline keeps her dark hair though, even if she swaps back to her more ordinary clothes.

.

They end up going to California. It's glamorous there, loud and noisy and totally alive. It's got a beat about it that makes Caroline's blood sing—think back to the times when she'd wanted to give up everything in Mystic Falls just to try and make it here.

(Caroline runs into Leonardo di Caprio and he mistakes her for a model. After three days, Tyler officially forbids her from mentioning it again).

But it's also far more conspicuous than they're little home in Arizona, and they have to work hard to stay subtle. Caroline stays as Claire Foster because it's easier, simpler—and has to avoid getting caught in the background of the thousands of paparazzi photos taken each day.

(Which totally sucks because Caroline's always wanted to go to the Oscars).

Tyler and Caroline decided back in Arizona that their relationship made things more complex. Their friendship was the best thing for the two of them—the one where they cared for each other because of something deeper than just having sex all the time and using the label 'boyfriend-girlfriend'.

They get a small two bedroom flat with a nice kitchen. Their jobs from Arizona have given them enough money and Caroline finds it easy to again, head to a nearby bar and grab herself a job waitressing. They're not exactly living the high life, but they've kind of even got savings right now, which will totally build up when you've got an eternity to wait for interest to rise.

They lose themselves in California. Caroline spends her days off at the beach. She doesn't have to work out because her body is eternally in shape, but she can work on getting a tan (yeah, apparently the rings didn't have a UV setting or something, but she's totally getting more golden). She takes a week off from work and parties the whole time, gets high for the first time in her life (awesome) and screws four different guys in those five days (less awesome, but fun enough).

When she's finished, she thanks god (?) for small mercies like the fact that vampires don't get hangovers, and heads back to work.

It's better here now. She feels more alive here, happier. But still, the calls she gets from Bonnie once a week make her feel homesick and she desperately wishes she could see her mum. She wants to get a hold of Elena Gilbert and hug her until she knows she's there—but that's not possible right now. None of it is.

One day she goes into work and feels a prickling at the back of her neck. She's just scrubbing the counters—getting rid of the spilt alcohol that's dried there over night—and she can feel it.

She spins around and nothing's there, of course. She looks like one of those pathetic girls in shitty horror movies (only, lol, she's the vampire in the story). Still though, nothing.

It continues the whole day. A swirling mess in her stomach that makes her feel uncomfortable and hot for the rest of the day. It's present, and she could be staring in to the eyes of a serial killer with the effect this is having on her.

She goes home and sleeps with Tyler. He's pretty keen, and it's really, really good—but they both know that it's one last hurrah.

The next morning, Caroline packs her bags and leaves, not remotely sure where she's going.

.

.

She robs a bank in Dallas. (Just pulls her hoodie up, over her head, leans in close and asks the cashier to empty out everything she has). She leaves the bank with an extra seventy five thousand dollars on hand, and a decision that this is nothing—this isn't stealing, this is surviving.

.

.

She ends up in Brazil. It easy for her to leave the country, without anyone else with any problematic legal issues. She's got all the right paperwork and in the end, all she needs to do is jump on a plane. It kind of worries her that they couldn't figure out she wasn't really called Claire Foster, but she's not a terrorist, just a bank robber so it's not that bad. It's just like she's under unofficial witness protection, really.

And Rio?

Rio is good.

She gets a hotel room because she's not sure how long she'll be staying. She splurges her earned money (from her job in Cali—she's been careful to keep the stolen money and the legitimate money separate) and then heads down to see what the night life is like in this city.

And man, is it good.

She spends the majority of the next two weeks out. She doesn't go back to her hotel room at all, crashing at the homes of people who've invited her over. She makes a couple of friends, (Gloria and Sasha and Meg) and they take the city by storm. The girls tell her that she's full of life and her energy is what keeps them going. Caroline just manages to not laugh in their faces at that, but it's a close thing.

She doesn't get a job here because she doesn't want to waste he life away in another damn bar. She does start taking a course at university though, working on it steadfastly because she does need something steady in her life.

She doesn't call or text anyone for a month or two, until the guilt overcomes her and she saves.

"Jesus H. Christ, Caroline—did you know how worried we were?"

Bonnie's engaged now, to her guy from the library. Caroline's been invited to the wedding, which is in six months, but Bonnie's got a new friend who'll be maid of honour. Caroline can remember all the times they'd talked about each other's weddings and that just feels kind of wrong.

("There are three of us, though." Elena had said in her sixteen year old voice. "We'll have to split it up evenly. I'll be Bonnie's, Bonnie will be Caroline's and Caroline can be mine.")

Caroline registers vaguely that a lot of girls probably make those kind of deals when they're young and don't end up following through, but she also makes a point to point out to herself that those distances were probably the result of different circumstances.

Their situation, after all, is pretty unique.

"Sorry, Bonnie," Caroline sighs down the phone. "I just—needed to get away for a bit."

These days, Bonnie always sounds a bit thrown when Caroline uses her real name. It's like she's sunk into Beth, taken on that life because Bonnie's always wanted to just be normal. Caroline had always wanted to shine and Elena had always shone regardless.

"Care—" Bonnie says, and Caroline makes herself that it's because it's always been her nickname—and not because it's so close to Claire. "—I know. I was just a bit worried. You can always come back here if you need someone to talk to."

Caroline looks around the room she's in. It's Meg's apartment and there are four naked Brazilian men sleeping on the floor.

"Not for this," Caroline says, while she's thinking 'No. I really can't.'

Bonnie sighs again. "It'll get better Caroline. I promise."

.

The best thing about Rio, though, is that eventually it goes to prove Bonnie right again. It does get better, in the end. Caroline hides away the seventy five grand, not wanting to spend it unless she absolutely has to, and gets a job at a yogurt shop.

(It's not a bar, so shut up). (Also, it kind of changes her life).

Because one day, the door presses open and Daniel walks in.

He's not wearing a shirt. Caroline's honest enough to admit that that's probably what first catches her attention—because he's carved like a mother fucking statue might have been, with a winning smile just to set the whole image off—but it's not what keeps her interested.

She asks him what he would like (she's learnt the language fairly quickly, and the good thing about a vampire brain is that you can apparently remember more) and he doesn't pause.

"Tutti fruity." He says, and it's a challenge, like he's daring her to comment. "And lots of it."

(Caroline never backs down from a challenge).

"Really? You don't think that's a girl's choice?" She's frank with him, raising an eyebrow to smirk at him while she glances at the rainbow coloured ice cream that goes into the smoothie he's asked for.

"We are in a yogurt shop, no?" he says. "Can you direct me to the masculine products you have to offer me?"

Caroline can't so she just laughs and scoops out some of the ice cream for his smoothie. The shop is relatively empty so they end up chatting casually while she makes his drink, and when she hands it over, he makes a point to brush their fingers against each other. He looks ready to say something else, but his friend follows him inside and catches his attention. They move to one of the small tables inside, for the few people who want to sit down and eat inside, instead of enjoying this fabulous city. Caroline steadfastly refuses to look at them, instead focusing on the other customers and cleaning the bench when there are none.

They stay for another half an hour, long after he's finished his smoothie, and when they stand up, it's only so that he can approach her again.

"My friend tells me you are ignoring me on purpose, because you are interested. Is this a thing that American girls do often?" he asks.

Caroline smirks. "How did you know I was American?"

Daniel (even if she doesn't know his name just yet) cracks a grin. "We do not get girls are pretty as you here."

Caroline can't help but grin at that. It's a horrible lie—the girls here are goddesses who practically glow with energy and life—and the accent and his language make him sound far more charming than he really is—but she can't help it. She's sucked in and she likes him. She licks her lips. "Did you want my attention for a reason?" she asks coyly.

Daniel nods. "I would like to take you out to dinner and learn all about you. But if you like, I am happy with your name."

Again, he's actually really lame.

She's totally charmed.

"It's Claire." She says, and smirks when she sees he's confused for a moment — trying to figure out if that means she does or doesn't want to go out with him. She quickly clears that up for him — "My shift finishes in two hours. Maybe you'll be here?"

His grins lights up the shop.

.

Daniel is everything she wanted.

He is tall and a pathetic romantic and entirely devoted to her. He seems to be of the bizarre mindset that she's too good for him, and works for her attention every day. The sex is fantastic, yes, but he also tries to learn some English for her, and he strokes her hair in his hands whenever he can get close enough.

Caroline shifts a little bit, from the partying in Rio to just living in Rio. She invites her friends to come to her hotel room for a night, just to watch movies and hang out like she hasn't in ages (because both of her best friends have left her behind).

She spends the night on the floor, sitting next to her friends with her back resting against Daniel's leg, his fingers running through her still dyed hair. She fights for the last of the popcorn with Sasha and she introduces Gloria to one of Daniel's friends because both of them insist at different points during the night.

It feels fun and it feels normal and it's totally freeing.

(She still drinks from blood bags and she still has to fight down the urge to hunt every now and again, but it's easier to do when the reward of that self control is all of this).

.

Daniel doesn't know about her yet, and she's not sure what to do about that. She's not sure if it even is a 'yet' situation—if she'll ever work up the courage to tell him that she's actually been dead all the time. It would be so easy for him to leave her as a result, and she doesn't want to risk it, risk this, because for the moment, this is kind of perfect.

It means that she'll have to leave in a couple of years.

But a couple of years is enough, right?

(She knows that it's not).

She have sex on the balcony of her hotel room, overlooking the lit city and trying not to be too loud. He's sitting in her chair, pressing deep inside her and peppering kisses all over her chest. It's overwhelming, being with him, being happy when everything in her life (her mother, her best friends, her ex boyfriends) is so fucked up. She can't really take it.

He pushes up and she clenches down, her fingernails digging into his shoulders.

"Fuck," she says, slipping back into English because there's no way she can focus at a time like this, pull her brain together enough to think of his language. "Fuck, baby, oh shit—I love you."

She's above him in this position—he's got her thighs pulling her closer, still biting and nipping at her neck. She presses her hands into his hair, kisses the crown of his head because it's the only part of him she can reach. Eventually, she pulls him back, pulls him into a proper kiss, a real kiss and murmurs more to him in English.

"I'm sorry, I love you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She says. "I'm lying to you, this is wrong. I want—I want — I just fucking love you."

He doesn't falter, doesn't hesitate.

"I do not know what you are saying," he says back, in unpractised English. "But you should know that I am happy and that I love you more than anything in the world. You are my star, Caroline."

(That is what she has told him. Her real name. It's a part of herself that she would like for him to have.)

She shudders and falls, over the abyss she'd been teetering on. He finishes off and she presses kisses all over his face, his shoulders and his neck because there aren't words for what she's feeling right now and she doesn't have any other way to express herself. Eventually, she can think hard enough to find the right words for him.

"Eu te amo."

(I love you).

.

She takes him to Bonnie's wedding and she's happier than she's been in a long time. She still hasn't told him, no, but he holds her hand the whole time and looks nervously cute about meeting some of her old friends. She has to remind him to call her Claire, and he does so expertly. Then she pulls him over to introduce him to Tom and Max and Bethany.

He's perfectly gorgeous with Bethany, saying all the right things and selling himself on his charm alone. His English still isn't great, but he gets along fine. Caroline feels like the grin might burst out of her when Daniel takes Tyler's hand and shakes it a little bit too roughly.

It doesn't affect Tyler in the slightest, but when he does the same thing to Matt, Matt winces and pulls away.

"I guess you told him about us then, huh, Claire?" Matt asks, a little bit of a smirk on his face.

She grins happily at him and nods, because any lie she tells now would be way too obvious. And besides, she doesn't want to lie. She has a man at her side who wants to keep her, to scare away any other man who is interested. She thinks that maybe, just maybe she could tell him.

Maybe he'd be alright with it.

Bethany and her fiancé end the day as husband and wife, and the ceremony is everything that Caroline has ever wanted for Bonnie. Her family isn't here, which is sad, and neither is Elena—but Joseph (the husband) has six siblings and twenty four cousins. As a wedding gift, Bonnie's new father in law gives them a house in the suburbs, and when they pass the picture of it around Caroline sees that — ha, yes — it has a white picket fence.

Matt spends the night with his girlfriend as well. Not Sophie—who he'd been with when Caroline left—but a new girl. Equally as good for him, and probably more likely to end up having the kids talk.

Caroline doesn't care because that's not a life for her now, and for the first time she's actually kind of okay with it.

She holds Daniel's hand tighter, and when he kisses her in the middle of the dance floor (after an extravagant twirl you can only learn in a place like Rio) she only laughs more.

.

She spends two years of her life with Daniel, in the end. She moves out of her hotel relatively soon after Bonnie's wedding, and into a small flat with him. She doesn't touch the seventy five grand—just stows it in a small compartment under the floorboards inside the cupboard under the stairs. She stays working at the yogurt studio, starts another lesson at university and begins a dancing class every Friday night. They go together, and after a couple of months they end most of their evenings dancing around their flat, singing to the latest hit and professing their love to each other.

It's romantic in the best sense of the word. Everything that Caroline has ever wanted from her life—she's out in the world and she's with a man who loves her and she's really, really fucking happy.

She makes the decision at the two year anniversary. Daniel gets down on one knee and swears to her that he can't live without her, demands that she marry him and she accepts without hesitation.

The only thing left now is to tell him the truth about herself. He'll be pissed, she thinks, but he'll understand. He has to understand—because he loves her, and that will conquer anything, right?

She sets up the apartment and orders him away for a couple of hours, covering the room in rose petals and lighting candles because hello, they're called clichés for a reason. The phone rings as she's putting the final touches on their homemade dinner.

"It's me," he says. "I'm back early—may I please come in?"

Caroline lets out a light laugh. "Give me another five minutes. Do a loop around the block for me?"

He grins into her ear. "Anything for you, my love."

She finishes setting the table, and she puts on some soft music from one of their dancing classes. The evening should go well, if she tells it to him gently, makes him understand that she never wanted to lie to him and he's not compelled to stay here if he doesn't want to.

The phone rings again.

She picks it up with a grin. "All finished, babe. You can come up now."

There's a pause.

"Is this Claire Foster? I have you listed as the emergency contact for a Mr. Daniel Santos, is that correct?"

.

Fifteen minutes is all it takes for a common thief on the streets to stab Daniel Santos in the abdomen twice. The blade hits an artery and the young man in question bleeds out in minutes. He is still alive when a passerby finds him, but he is dead by the time that he arrive at the hospital.

.

Her life fucking implodes and there's nothing she can do about it. The guilt, the mother fucking guilt, clings to her every pore—every movement is weighed down by her own voice, playing on loop in her head ("Do a loop around the block for me?"). Any other night and they would have both been inside, watching the television or dancing and the mugger would have had no victim.

But she'd made the decision and he'd died.

Caroline looks into it extensively. The retribution she expels on the guilty man is illegal in every definition of the word, and it's not remotely enough.

He mugs someone else a couple of nights later, and gets caught. He refuses to confess to the murder however. The cops leave the room for a moment, a sheer second, and return to find the man dead, sprawled in a pile of his own blood and piss.

It's not fucking enough.

The fury that over takes her is only a way for her to block out the devastation. Somehow, Bonnie (fucking Bethany) finds out and tells Tyler and Matt. Caroline snaps her second sim card all over again, throws it off the roof and then curls up into a ball and fucking cries.

The thing is—she determines, that this shitstorm was never supposed to be her life. This wasn't what was meant for her she's damn well sure of it. Everything got fucked up when Stefan and Damon Salvatore came to town. When Katherine Pierce held a pillow over her head until she stopped breathing.

But in the end, everything that went wrong traces back to one person. One person with cold grey eyes and an infuriating smirk—a man who thought he could take what he wanted and get the fuck away with it. Someone who had forced to her to run across the country—to hide from him like the one woman she detested most in the world (running like Katherine fucking Pierce)—someone who told her hair colour and her clothing style and her mother fucking name.

Klaus.

I'll wait for you.

.

.

/Part Two/

"There's a crack in the mirror and a bloodstain on the bed, oh you were a vampire and baby, I'm the walking dead."

— Concrete Blonde

.

.

She fixes her hair. It's something she has to do professionally, because apparently it's way easier to go from light to dark than the other way around, but they get her natural hair colour back—if maybe a shade lighter and the golden curls around her face make her feel powerful again. She abandons her new style of clothing and returns to the black skinny jeans and heels combo she rocked for the first seventeen years of her life.

Her fiancé is dead. She hasn't seen her mother in nearly five years. She has no idea whether or not her best friend is alive. She doesn't have any friends left to talk to—and none that she would trust enough to count on.

She's in this by herself (lonely, so alone) and it's all his fault.

.

She goes to Singapore and spends three days there.

It's busy there, terrifyingly so—and so, so big that she can hide herself in it. She lets herself become just another of the faceless thousands in the streets every day.

Initially, her plan is to spend longer. She's got seventy five grand in her bag and a whole new outlook on how she's going to spend her eternal life—and there's preparations she needs to make. She buys an apartment there, a large one with a doorman and a fantastic security set up, and she sets everything out.

She looks up martial arts instructors in the area and checks them all out. She will only settle for the best at this point—she needs to learn how to take care of herself. Until now she's been clumsy, using the strength she's given and the speed. It won't be enough with him. She needs to own him.

In the end, the best tutor for Caroline ends up being the one that the least people go to. He's a short man with a full head of black hair and a wry smile. He's wearing khakis when she meets him, and a Hawaiian shirt.

For a moment, Caroline thinks she's got the wrong place, until he reaches out and flips her flat on her back like he's swatting a fly out of the way.

"You look like you have a problem I can solve," he says, peering over at her while she lies on the floor, totally stunned.

She snaps out of it pretty quickly though, with his words. All of the other people she's gone to see have just talked to her about group sessions and work out therapy and such. Her BMI and whether or not she'll really commit to the twelve week plan or the six week one.

He looks down at her like she's a particularly exciting puzzle for him to work out.

"I have a problem that I will solve." She says venomously, pushing herself up to her feet and glaring at him. "You're just going to help me get there."

He nods his head sagely and shrugs, like the difference is something he doesn't remotely care about. "We'll see." He says. He turns his back on her and walks out of the room.

Caroline follows him. It's a work shop, with padded floors, and weapons of every sort adorning the walls. He's walked directly to the middle of the room and is now facing her again, waiting to see what she'll do with this new situation.

Caroline kicks off her heels and pushes up her sleeves. If he wants to start right away then she's got no complaints.

"This just means you're wasting less of my time." She tells him, throwing the shoes to the corner and walking towards him carefully. She's got her jeans on but she can move in them enough she thinks. She's wearing a normal long sleeve t-shirt, which she throws off, so that she's just in her singlet. Better manoeuvrability, she thinks.

She walks right up to him and lifts her arms, ready to fight.

.

(Long story short, he kicks her ass).

.

His name is Stuart Lee. She's relatively sure that that's not his real name, but it doesn't matter to Caroline at all, as long as he can teach her the skills she needs. And it's evident that this is well within his skill set.

The first time he lays her out, (or the second, if you include their unusual introduction) all he has to do is bring on hand to her shoulder. Her first instinct is to move to that hand, try and wrench it away from her—and there's her downfall. He grabs her elbow where it's written, and uses the grip she's got on his wrist to push—twisting the bone around. Her body moves with it, surprise mostly, and as she stumbles, his foot flies out. Then she's on the ground.

The second (third) and third (fourth) are about the same. Caroline ends up dazed and on the floor and Stuart looks like he hasn't lifted a finger.

Oh, and while he wipes the floor with her dignity, he also apparently gets a twenty-twenty look right into her psyche, and then he's figured her out.

"You're angry." He says, and it's another simple truth, accompanied with a shrug. "That makes you easy to beat."

Caroline doesn't think that's right. (She can directly remember shoving Damon away from her father, using her anger in a way to combat his strength).

Stuart quickly proves himself right—the fourth (fifth) fall, and Caroline stays down for another second, eyeing him from the floor. There must be something supernatural about this man, she thinks. For him to be able to disarm and defeat her so quickly.

"The question is what are you angry about?" Stuart presses.

Caroline pushes herself to her feet, and attacks again. This time, she employs her vampire strength.

Incredibly, he only brings her down faster. He uses the momentum from her running approach and ducks with his knees, pushes out with his hands—hits her knees and she half staggers half flies to the ground. She actually skids a bit, before stopping—her cheek burn from the plastic rub of the mat.

(It heals instantly. She's pretty sure that Stuart notices. He doesn't seem to care).

"It's personal." Stuart continues, because it's like he's taken this impromptu training session as an invite to name himself her shrink or something. "You feel you've been wronged."

Images flash in Caroline's head, beginning with the memory of Elena—Katherine—pressing a pillow over her head and holding it there. It ends with the sound of the cold voice on the other end of the phone, ("I have you listed as the emergency contact for a Mr. Daniel Santos, is that correct?")

She circles him on the mat, moving slowly and carefully, keeping an equal distance from him at all times. He's still watching her closely, like this is some casual critique—like he's just casually beating up a vampire.

"You're dead." He says, "but your anger runs deeper than that."

His abruptness takes her off guard and she pauses just for a second, to stare at him in shock. He takes the moment's distraction to his advantage though, and in a second she's flat on her back again. This time he is standing over her, a heavy foot pressing down against her collar bone.

Caroline doesn't move.

"Something personal motivates you." Stuart keeps on talking. "That's good—in any vendetta you need to keep a clear end in sight—a goal to achieve." He pauses for a second, then continues. "But this is consuming you, distracting you and while that occurs you will never be successful. There is nothing I can do for you."

He steps back and walks away from her, like he hasn't just opened up her motives to the world like she was wearing some giant neon fucking sign.

She gets to her feet with an angry sound that makes him pause. But she doesn't attack him. At this point she knows that anything like that is only going to embarrass hers. She forces herself to stay still but she can't stop her fists from clenching together.

Stuart turns and sees this, before he smirks. "You're not going to attack me?" He asks.

Caroline scowls at him. "What's the point?" She demands.

He grins openly at her, and it's kind of terrifying. "You're learning," he remarks—but his gaze is heavy on her furious expression. "Perhaps I can teach you something after all."

.

Ultimately, Stuart listens to Caroline's story. He doesn't seem remotely surprised by the fact that she's not really alive, which gives her a hint as to why he's so good with hand to hand combat (still, this is a defensive fighting place, which confuses Caroline because the people that Caroline's met with skills like his don't usually sit back and fight defensive).

But he refuses to teach her.

"You are messy, clumsy." He says. "Too distracted by what's going on in here—" he presses a solid finger to her forehead, "—and in here." Now her chest, right about where her heart used to beat. "Fix that, and then come back."

Caroline blinks at him for a moment. Again, she knows better than to argue.

Instead, she says, "How?"

Stuart smirks again. "Lose yourself. But do not forget the pain."

.

Caroline goes to Europe. She considers doing as she's been told in Singapore—the nightlife there isn't exactly lacking anything—but there is something in her telling her that it is a place of discipline. She can't lose herself there, because she needs to return and focus there. Much better to leave and come back—with her mind ready to learn—than to ruin the place of learning in her desperation to just fucking forget.

She keeps her apartment there though. She finally cuts into the seventy five grand that she's been carrying around with her—takes twenty five thousand with her and leaves the rest, hidden in the flat with the stunning security detail.

She lands in London—an easy flight, and the first one she could get out—but then moves quickly to catch another, smaller plane to Germany.

(It's October. Or, well, Oktoberfest. It's easy to lose yourself when you've got a tankard to swim in).

.

The first couple of nights she feels like an idiot. Its stifling here, and without something to focus on her grief comes back tenfold. She wants to be doing something, actively seeking out her revenge because that is a sure fire distraction.

This isn't. This is floating. This is Claire Foster, before she met Daniel Santos, just moving through her fake life and trying not to affect anything. This isn't what she wants.

Still, she remembers what Stuart has told her. This is the first step to having something to do. To achieving her goal—to avenging the life that Caroline lost, and the one she could have had with Daniel.

She goes to a bar in Prague and drinks enough alcohol that she almost feels it. Getting drunk is harder, as a vampire, but not impossible. (The amount of alcohol in her system right now would probably kill anyone with a heartbeat).

In the end, she just kind of looks like another American tourist, too stupid to drink responsibly in a foreign country.

People take advantage. Or try to. (Caroline maintains that she did it unintentionally, but most of the time even she isn't sure).

It's not long before a burly, muscled local with too much facial hair is pulling her out the back of the bar, muttering to her in his language and already fiddling with his belt.

He shoves a hand up her skirt.

Caroline shoves an arm at his neck, pushes him into the wall and smiles vindictively as his head starts to bleed.

He's dazed for a minute, and then terrified. Caroline doesn't care.

"Do you know what time is it in Rio right now?" she slurs at him, managing to focus on the man's wide eyes as she talks.

Her words are linked together and her eyes feel heavy, but her body is on fire with grief and pain and she just wants it to go away. The man shakes his head. Caroline lets out a snort of drunken laughter.

"It's seven. Friday night at seven o'clock." She pauses to ponder this in all of its miserable truth. "We would have been dancing." She swings her head so that she can look the man in the eye again. He's still blurry. "We always went dancing on Friday nights."

The man is struggling, his feet struggling to get purchase because of how Caroline's got him shoved up against the wall. He's saying things in his language, frantic, terrified things and she kind of gets the message that he doesn't speak English and therefore has no idea what she's saying.

"Do you know what's so fucked up about all of this?" she demands of him again, her thoughts struggling to align properly. Her head is kind of spinning. God, she just wants to cry. "It's that he's probably in heaven right now—seeing, watching what a monster I am and probably thanking god that they intervened and got him out of there before he got stuck with me."

She can just imagine Daniel leaning across and shaking Jesus' hand. Watching Caroline right now with a look of disappointment and horror that she'd never really seen on his face, but that she can imagine now.

God, he would fit in up there. With all those angels.

Shit.

"I'm a monster," she insists to the man. His face is getting purple, she notes now, and she's kind of leaning more heavily against his neck because she's fucking dizzy man. "I'm a vampire. I eat people."

Vampire is apparently one of those words that can be translated all over the world because the guy renews his struggles and lets out a little noise of terror.

Caroline tilts her head to the side (it's easier to focus on his features that way, because the world is kind of rocking), and considers the man in front of her.

He's short, fat, gross. He's got a wedding ring though, and underneath the stench of alcohol and sweat on his clothes, Caroline can smell the remnants of baby powder underneath his fingernails and the smell of baby on his clothes.

She drains him within seconds, and leaves his dead body in the alley way.

.

From there she kind of spirals. If coming to Europe had been about losing herself than, yeah, she fucking succeeds because she just kind of forgets everything. Forgets the person she was, the person she wanted to be and just exists. She's a vampire, so why shouldn't she act like a fucking vampire?

She leaves a clumsy trail of messy (mutilated) bodies across Europe. It starts in Prague, and doesn't stop until one night in Florence.

She's biting into the neck of an enthusiastic asshole, who'd hit his girlfriend across the face earlier when she'd spilt his beer, and she hears her name.

"Caroline?"

And it takes her a minute to place it. (It's been five years now, okay? Oh—wait, by now it's more like five and a half). She tears her teeth out of the asshole's neck (she's not particularly neat about it either, a strip of his skin actually gets caught in her teeth).

Which is the image she present to Stefan Salvatore, seeing him for the first time since Mystic Falls.

He looks exactly the same (lol, of course he does—he's been immortal a lot longer than Caroline has). But she means, like, right down to the expression on his face. It's the same one Caroline's had directed at her a lot from this boy (man, what the fuck ever). She remembers when he told her 'you and me? It's not going to happen' and when he helped her with her transition and when he helped her grow into a vampire.

She didn't get to see the expression when he abandoned her, because he didn't even say goodbye. Caroline's not really sure if she's pissed about that or not.

(well no. She's definitely pissed. But she can't be sure about whether a goodbye would have been better or worse).

Oh and there's a shit load of horror in his face as well. Like he can't believe what he's seeing.

Caroline doesn't like it much. She's still got the guy in her arms—even if she wants to get away from him, she can't because if he gets away she'll need to wipe his memory. (She really had no plans to let him live).

"Caroline—what?" he breathes out in abject horror. "What happened?"

There's an unspoken 'to you' that makes Caroline flinch.

Then, just because this is her life now and it can't get any worse, Damon and Elena show up.

Caroline doesn't have the time to wonder exactly how the three of them have sorted out their horrible love triangle thing for five years, because Elena's suddenly giving her the same look that Stefan was, only it's to the brim full of judgement and disappointment.

Damon is watching as well but there's a look of incredulous pride on his face.

(Caroline Forbes, the real one who she's shoved down so far inside her she can barely remember her anymore, feels ill just seeing his little smirk).

It's worse than the judgement and in the end and it's what makes Caroline take a step back from the man she's eating. She wipes where the blood has dripped on her face and chin with the back of her hand, smearing the red on her sleeve of her jacket. She lets her victim down delicately, so that his feet brush the floor, but she keeps a hand still around the guy's arm because he's practically sagging in her hold. She's taken too much from him for him to recover now. It's a waste of good blood now.

She smiles as best she can, trying not to think about how gruesome her teeth must look.

She doesn't say anything because she can't think of a single thing to say. It's easier, she finds, to clean up after herself while that's a priority. She slips her hand up, the man slumping in her grip, until her hand's at the guy's neck. Her mind is frantically figuring out how she wants this confrontation to go.

(She's buzzing. She's a little high from the blood, she's terrified about what's happening and it's all being drowned out by the presence of an uncontrollable anger in her veins).

She snaps the guy's neck and drops him. He slumps to the floor immediately, and while he doesn't make a sound (obviously), Elena lets out a little shocked noise of horror.

"Hey guys," she says, employing the cheery voice that she used to use specifically when interacting with the girls from cheer. "What's up?"

.

Despite how angry Caroline is with them, Damon and Stefan manhandle her easily into their car. (It looks like that whole 'I'm angrier' thing was a total fluke, Caroline realises—which she should have expected. Damon and Stefan are over one hundred and fifty years older than her). Elena follows behind them, mute and shocked, her mouth opening and closing but no words coming out.

She probably can't find the right ones.

Which is about how Caroline feels. Because how to you phrase 'get the fuck off me, you lost the right to care when you abandoned me' exactly the right way?

In the end Caroline just shoves what she wants to say down, holds it there until they really press the line. Seriously, if they start telling her how she's better than all of this, heads will fucking roll. She doesn't care about their age difference.

The ride to their home is silent. Caroline spends it trying to think of one liners and pick the skin from her teeth.

She flounces out of the car before anyone can push or pull her anywhere, and for a second she considers just running. The small house that they've made their home is modern, for sure, but it's also surrounded by a quaint European forest that, for some reason, reminds Caroline of the house from Twilight.

She can't really help the snort that escapes her. Again, Elena looks at her like she's just murdered a bunch of kittens, and Damon looks weirdly proud.

Caroline sobers immediately, and glances at Stefan. He's watching her with his own expression on his face. Jesus, he's fucking horrified.

Caroline doesn't care. This is their fault anyway. She rolls her eyes when she catches his eye and he quickly looks away. She glances one more time at where she could run and hesitates for another second. Elena is halfway into the house.

Damon isn't. He appears right next to her, his finger curling into a strand of her hair. He smiles down at her like the last time they saw each other was yesterday.

"Don't even think about it, Blondie." He says with one of those vicious eye flashes of him, like he's a cross between Ted Bundy and fucking Willy Wonka.

Caroline shoves him away from her and snarls a little. For the first moment she's comforted by the fact that Damon looks surprised, and suddenly she thinks about how he's always had the upper hand over her.

She smiles viciously at him. "Don't touch me." She hisses at him. "I don't know what kind of tricks you picked up over the years. Can't have you raping me again."

It's the first time either of them have ever addressed those first few months before she was turned. There was her attack, when she was turning, and then everything was shoved down and forgotten, like he hadn't been compelling her, stealing her memories and sleeping with her anyway.

She turns her back on his shocked expression and stalks inside. Her heels crunch against the gravel, and Elena is waiting in the doorway, watching the exchange with wide eyes.

It's immediately clear that none of them have any idea what to say. When Damon enters behind her, he closes the door and his expression is changed. He's not shocked or amused anymore. He's watching her wearily, like he knows that something big has changed her and she's not dealing with anyone's shit right now.

Caroline starts, because she's the intruder right? They're all at least a little comfortable in this house.

(It's modern, like she said. Sleek furniture in the middle of the room and a plasma screen TV scream Damon Salvatore at her, but the walls are lined with bookshelves, all unceremoniously ordered. There's a takeout menu and three remote controls scattered over the coffee table, a couple of empty but not cleaned mugs sitting on top of a news paper in the language of what the fuck ever country she's in right now. Fuck, there are even a couple of photos on the mantle—all probably Elena's input—and Jeremy's in a couple even though Caroline can't smell any human blood nearby).

"This is a nice place," Caroline says casually, trying not to sound as vicious as she had moments ago. It doesn't really work. She sounds defensive and put upon and Elena actually flinches a little. (Fucking good).

Damon grimaces a little. "We weren't aware we were going to have company. I would have cleaned."

Caroline smirks tightly at him. "I bet." She glances around, strolls casually further into the room and lingers at the mantle. Closer now, she can see that the picture is of Jeremy in a graduation cap. He looks older.

"How's Jeremy doing?" Caroline asks, lifting up the photo and running her fingertips across the spaces where she can see evidence of aging. His cheeks have filled out a little more and there's the hint of stubble on his cheeks.

"He's studying." Elena says quickly. "He finished high school off here, but he's gone to Brown for college."

Caroline thinks of the night classes that she had to take, and the last year of high school that she didn't get to have. She considers Matt and Bonnie, who had to start all over, work for themselves to even afford to put themselves through school.

(She remembers something her father said to him, when he'd refused to drink and transition. She'd been crying pretty badly at that point, but she'd heard everything.

"I never wanted this for you Caroline. I swear—I wanted you to finish high school and go off to university and change the world." He'd told her weakly.

Caroline had smiled. "I can still do that."

Huh, apparently not).

The glass fractures in her grasp—only a tiny bit, barely noticeable—but they all hear it. It's apparently what breaks their hesitance in the room, because suddenly Caroline's being flooding with faux concern and more fucking questions.

"Geez, Blondie—what's gotten into you?" (Three guesses).

"Are you alright, Caroline?" (Stefan).

"Caroline, please—tell me what's wrong, we can help."

Caroline whips around to stare at Elena with wide eyes. She actually gapes for a second because Elena doesn't say anything, just stares right back with a look of sadness and worry and pity. And it's that that breaks Caroline's restraint—because she can't, she can't fucking let Elena get away with this still thinking she's done the right fucking thing.

"You can help me?" Caroline demands shrilly. Her voice is hoarse, soft and deadly and it's the same tone that has sent many men to their deaths over the last couple of months. Stefan and Damon are immediately tense. The room crackles with electricity.

Elena doesn't notice. "Yes, Care—"

"—Don't you fucking dare call me that." Caroline snaps furiously. The anger throbs through her veins so furious that it's hot, it's dying to get out of her, bursting the damn. "You want to help me Elena, then why don't you tell me where you've been the last five years."

Elena gapes.

Caroline doesn't give her time to respond.

"You know, Elena—it pissed me off in high school that everything was about you. Boys, parents—everyone fucking loved you. And whatever—it was high school. But then your dream team arrived, fucked up everyone all for you. I have been in hiding for the last five years. Because you went and got yourself killed, and apparently the way that Klaus dealt with that was by trying to kill everyone? And what did you do then?"

Stefan takes a cautious step forward. "Caroline..."

She ignores him.

"You fucking vanished." Caroline finished dramatically. "You left us to fend for ourselves, to deal with the consequences of your fucking selfishness. So if you could please tell me, fucking explain to me exactly how you're going to help me with this."

Elena's got tears in her eyes. Caroline feels fucking triumphant. Stefan's still looking at her like she's just another thing he's going to be guilty for. (That's what he fucking deserves). Damon's looking totally dangerous now, the same way he always did when Elena got upset and he was around. He takes a step forward.

"Alright," he says, eyes flashing again in warning. His tone is light though, like he's trying to cool everyone down. "You don't know what you're talking about." He says.

Caroline punches him in the face. He isn't anticipating it, so when he fist settles at his cheekbone, he goes flying back, stumbling and tripping over the couch. The impact stings Caroline's fist but she doesn't care.

"That's where you're wrong, Damon." She sneers at him, as Elena lets out a little noise again and rushes to his side. He groans but lies where he fell. He obviously doesn't see Caroline as much of a threat. Doesn't stop her from talking though. "I've had time to learn. Five years, you know, to figure out exactly how I feel about you people. And it's no positive."

Elena cradles Damon's head closer to her, pulling so that he's resting on her lap. Damon glances at her and evidentially forgets everything else. Caroline's eyebrows rise and she thinks, right—so that's how it is. She glances at Stefan. He doesn't look surprised or remotely pissed by the interaction between his ex and his brother. He's still carefully watching Caroline.

"You cut him." Elena says softly, like Damon's not a vampire and isn't already healing. Now what were bleeding cuts are just two red marks on his cheek. They're spaces apart, slices from the metal insets of two rings.

Her gaze swings to Caroline's hand, but Stefan puts it together first. She'd swung with her left hand.

"Caroline, you're wearing an engagement ring."

It's not a question. It's a statement. Caroline suddenly becomes aware of the ring she hasn't taken down, weighing down her hand like a brand because it means she can't ever forget.

("Ah, my love you're home!" Daniel had said as she walked through the front door of their apartment. She was still wearing her work uniform, and she'd just finished a eight hour shift—the other girl who worked there had called in sick and Caroline had had to take both shifts. "Work was brutal." She says.

Still, seeing Daniel—with a bright smile on his face and salsa music playing in the background—makes her feel so much better. She drops her keys into the bowl on the side and walks over to him. She kisses him quickly, a peck on the lips that lingers for a moment. "It's good to see you though." She tells him against his lips, before she pulls away.

"Do you want anything special for dinner? I was thinking about ordering some pizza." She's not in the mood to cook right now, but still she moves to the kitchen to see what food they might have around. She peers into the fridge and feels Daniel move behind her. He presses his hands against her hips, his hard chest pulling her back close to him so that he can brush her hair out of the way and press a kiss to the nape of her neck. She feels, rather than sees, as he grins into her neck. She pulls the milk bottle out of the fridge to take a swig before turning around to face him, twisting in his grasp but not pulling away.

He only grins wider when she faces him. She can feel the milk moustache on her face and he chuckles as he presses a kiss to her nose.

She grins right back. "So, pizza?" she reminds him.

"That sounds lovely, my love." He says softly, kissing her quickly again. She pulls herself out of his grasp so that she can reach the phone. She's dialled four digits when Daniel continues. "But first, can you tell me if you'll marry me?"

Caroline drops the phone, and stares at him. For a moment, she's shell shocked, but then the smile on her face practically outshines anything else in the room.

They don't end up getting pizza—they eating ice cream for dinner in bed, while Caroline admire her ring and kisses him every time she remembers. She's engaged.)

(She doesn't ever want to forget).

But she will not share Daniel with them, no way. So she shrugs it off. "Points for observation there, Holmes." She snaps at him.

Damon pushes himself to his feet again, obviously more than a little pissed by now. But he doesn't attack or anything. Just smirks. "Have you finally caught up on your reading, Caroline? That's pretty impressive."

Caroline wants to punch him again, but Stefan shushes him before she can go for it. He hasn't taken his eyes off of her.

"Caroline," he says softly. "Please." —he steps forward, closer to her and holds out his arms— "let us help you. Something's wrong, but we can fix it. We can explain about why we left. If you just listen."

And the thing is she's pissed. But she's also tired, and exhausted and sick of running. Daniel's ring is heavy on her finger. So for a moment, a millisecond, she almost relaxes (collapses) and takes this for what it could be.

Then the front door opens and Rebekah fucking Mikaelson walks in.

"Home," she calls out, dropping her keys into her hand bag. "Stef, where—?" She looks up and catches sight of Caroline, and falls silent. "Ah—Caroline. Haven't heard from you in a while."

And this is Rebekah.

As in Rebekah.

And as much as Caroline is trying to make a point and stand strong and get ready to hunt down her brother, she's still terrified because she's not ready and she's just spent five years running from this family. Everything, her life, all blown, thrown upside down all over again because—

"Caroline, it's not what you think." Stefan says quickly, urgently.

Caroline throws him off. She's still got Jeremy's picture in her hand and, staring at Rebekah, she decides that this is survival. Her survival. And if Elena and Damon and Stefan didn't care about hers than she sure as fuck didn't care about theirs.

She smashes the picture on the mantle, the glass falling into thousands of pieces and the wooden frame snapping—so that Caroline now conveniently got a sharp wooden stake in her hands.

Rebekah sees it and sighs. "Now, Caroline—you know that won't work."

Five seconds later, it's embedded in Rebekah's chest, and Caroline's other hand is around her neck. And sure, Caroline had been ready to write off that whole 'I'm angrier moment' as a fluke, but there's apparently so much more to be said for total fucking fear. She's not ready to die. She needs to kill Klaus, take him with her when she goes to hell.

Then again, Rebekah is an Original.

Caroline is thrown back, clean across the room. "Haven't we grown past this, Caroline?" Rebekah teases.

Caroline gets to her feet immediately. She doesn't have a weapon any more, and she's significantly more exposed than Rebekah. She doesn't attack, because it would be incredibly stupid to do so at this point. So she just talks.

"We are." She snaps furiously. "We should just have a little chat then, right?" She doesn't wait for an answer. "You should tell your brother to fucking gear up."

Rebekah grins with her stupid crazy bitch eyes. "Why?" She coos, like this is some sort of joke. "Are you planning to visit him? Well, that's just lovely—he'll be so excited—what's the nature of the house call? Business or pleasure?"

"I'm going to kill him." Caroline says, ignoring everyone else in the room. "And if he'll be as happy as you think, it'll only make it easier."

"You can't kill him. You may be a pretty thing, but he'll kill you if he has to." Rebekah says with a simple shrug. Nice try, Caroline, the shrug says, try again later.

Caroline shakes her head, unleashes a vicious smirk. "Then I'll take him down with me."

"Caroline..." Stefan says again, sounding pained.

She turns her head to glare at him. He doesn't seem remotely bothered that Rebekah is in their house. Neither do Elena or Damon. All three of them look more worried by Caroline. It makes all of this so much worse. So Caroline doesn't hesitate. "You better stay out of my way. For the moment, I'm happy to fight the man who made me run. Better hope I don't start thinking about the people really responsible for ruining my life."

Elena looks shattered with that. Damon pushes past her and he's angry now as well. "Listen, Blondie, you don't know jack shit about the last five years."

"And whose fault is that, you fucking asshole?" Caroline fucking screams at him. It takes him aback and gives her just enough time to get another hit in, throwing him clear across the room. She speeds out of the door with one final manic grin at Rebekah, and then she disappears into the trees.

.

She gets the next flight out to Singapore. Her head feels light and she's dizzy, in over her head and really fucking confused. Because she's thrumming on energy and she feels alive again and she's ready, she's ready to take Klaus down because there's nothing in her way.

She twists Daniel's ring on her finger, and for the first time in a long time she smiles at it. This might be about Daniel, directly related to him—but this is also for her, for Caroline Forbes—who hasn't seen her mum in five years and finally punched Damon Salvatore in the face.

She walks into Stuart's studio as soon as her flight lands, and when he looks up to see her, he grins.

.

.

/Part Three/

"So close no matter how far, couldn't be much more from the heart, forever trust in who we are, and nothing else matters,"

— Metallica

.

.

The most important thing that Caroline needs is, in fact, in Virginia. All the Original daggers are with the Original family, and are therefore not an option. What is an option, however, is the white oak daggers that they made on their first, unschooled attempt to kill Klaus. Caroline doesn't have it in her possession yet, but a single call to Tyler fixes that problem for her. He's unsired and he's a hybrid (a dying breed, without the doppelganger's blood). He's relatively safe and he's really fucking fast.

All it takes is a text to confirm the deal.

Got it. Be careful. Good luck. -T

(Oh, and an address. It's in Ohio).

.

Singapore is wet. Wet and hot and Caroline can't walk anywhere without the heat stifling her. The streets smell of sweat and it seeps into everything—not the sweat, Caroline can't do that anymore, but the damn smell. She can't get away from it, the pungent odour caressing her everywhere.

It only serves to make her more frustrated.

Which Stuart insists is a good thing.

When he'd insisted that she tell him everything, he was adamant that she leave out names. She understands. He is a teacher—her teacher—but he isn't and shouldn't be involved. Her conflict with Klaus Mikaelson is her own, and she won't have another person get caught on the casualty list. (Daniel's name is already there—and Matt's and Bonnie's because while they're not dead, their past lives are). Stuart doesn't need to know who it is that he's dealing with to teach her how to fight.

He just needs the rough outline. (In the end, she'd only given three describing words: malicious, obsessive and really, fucking strong).

The thing is that Stuart has been fighting like this for a long time. He was raised on the streets of Singapore (and is now a martial arts expert? Yeah, Caroline can practically smell the cliché), so he already knew about vampires before Caroline had walked into his shop.

He doesn't seem to care that she survives on blood—that she was on a warpath for the last couple of months.

She's ready now, he says. And he's ready to teach her.

.

She walks in, teeth clenched and hands fisted. She wants the smell of sweat and heat to leave her so much that she's about ready to punch a hole in the nearest wall.

Stuart punches her in the face before she's fully through the door.

She reels back, hitting the back of her skull on the doorframe and letting out a vicious cuss word. She presses one hand to her nose, and reacts blindly with her other, swinging out and trying to hit anything in response.

He dodges and punches her again.

"Fuck." She swears, this time pushing herself out of his reach. Her nose is setting incorrectly, so she has to push it back into place straight away. It hurts like a bitch and her eyes fill up with tears. It takes her a couple of seconds and once she's recovered, Stuart is standing opposite her, with a smirk on his face.

"You tell me that your opponent has been alive for more than one thousand years." Stuart says diligently, lunging for her. This time, Caroline manages to dodge his swing and hit him back with one of her own. He recovered quickly though, spinning with the impact and managing to stay upright. "His is an attack you should always be prepared for."

He swings. She ducks his fist, grabs his wrist and yanks on his arm, hoping to push him off balance. All the move achieves, however, is in giving him more momentum to slam his other hand—palm open—across her face, slapping against her cheek and pushing her head to the side with a loud 'crack!'

She stumbles back again.

"He will not be an opponent." Stuart says, not hesitating on following through with another attack. He brings two swift hits to her ribs before she kicks him back, her foot solidly hitting his thigh. She grins viciously at the words though, assuming Stuart means that instead of an opponent, he will be a victim. Her victim. For the first time in his long life. But Stuart confuses her by following up with: "not at his age, with his knowledge."

"What?" she demands, and her confusion becomes just another opportunity for him to kick her, this time doing a complex spin that avoids both her fists before kicking her in the jugular.

She flies through the air for a moment and lands on her back. (If she still had lungs that worked, she'd have been winded).

Stuart smiles grimly at her. "He is a hunter." He says smoothly. "You are less than he is. He is old and strong and wise and if what you say is true then he will kill you without hesitation. He will not wait or pause in doing so."

(I'll wait for you).

Caroline shakes her head furiously. "He won't see me coming."

She swings around, running at him and dodging to the left to avoid his punch. She grabs his shoulder, twists and brings her knee up, getting him in the stomach. For a minute she feels triumphant—but then Stuart, who might as well be super human at this point, brings his arm around, grabs her waist tightly and lifts her clear off the ground. The world spins for a minute as she is knocked off balance and she flails in the air. Then Stuart releases her and sends her falling to the mat on the ground.

She lands with her arms underneath her, and there's nothing she can do about it when Stuart lifts his boot and presses it down on her throat.

"Yes he will."

He steps back, releasing her, but there is something in his stance that tells Caroline the fight is over for now. Now he has something he needs her to hear.

Sure enough he moves to the middle of the studio and sits down, crossing his legs and falling into what must be like six different stereotypes as he does so. He doesn't fold his legs though, he just kneels on the ground and then rests back on his heels. He sets his hands down on his knees and looks at Caroline evenly.

She crouches down opposite him, shamed. If she can't beat this man how on earth will she be able to beat Klaus fucking Mikaelson?

"You must know who you are fighting." Stuart says, his voice soft but stern. "If you were to fight a spider what would you bring to help?"

Caroline frowns. "Like a giant spider or something?"

Stuart rolls his eyes. "No. A spider. If you are going to kill a spider that's in your pantry, how would you do it?"

Caroline thinks this must be a trick question, but she can't figure it out so she shrugs and decides to get the lessen over with. "Uh, a cup I guess, if I wanted to take it outside. Maybe a shoe if it was too big." (Yeah, yeah she's a vampire sure, but spider's a freaky little things with more than two eyes and she's allowed to maybe freak out a bit when she comes in contact with them).

Stuart smirks. "Would you take the same things if you were to fight a lion?" He asks.

"No." Caroline has the sudden vision of herself trying to fight off a lion with a hot pink stiletto heel (it's not the shoe she would have chosen to fight the spider either, but it's what's in the mental image and it adds to the whole 'this is fucking ridiculous' vibe the moment's getting).

"And what would you take if you were going to fight a vampire?"

Vervain.

A stake.

(Back up?)

"And if you go to fight him?"

But Caroline already knows this. The list of weapons that are required to kill Klaus (well, the list of one option) are different to that of a normal vampire. He's not a normal vampire. He's an Original.

But that's nothing Caroline can't handle.

Stuart's lips tighten into a disapproving line when she says as much.

"Your Klaus has hundreds of years experience on you." He says, totally business now. He seems a bit frustrated. "He will see you coming because he knows to expect it. Do you really think you are the first person in the world to have a vendetta against him? Over one thousand years?"

Caroline blinks.

"You need to anticipate his actions, Caroline." Stuart presses on. "You can't just assume you'll be stealthy enough—the first one to get lucky. You need to make yourself smarter than him—you need to have a plan and a backup plan and a backup plan for that plan. Do you understand?"

(She's beginning to).

Caroline shakily nods her head.

Stuart studies her for another second, watching her reaction and the changes in her face, before nodding his head resolutely. "Good." He says. "We'll work on it."

Then he springs off his heels, flips over her and his fist hits the back of her head. (Again).

.

She studies with him for six months. She still finds him a hard opponent, but she beats him every now and again these days—they are evenly matched. The time not spent with Stuart is spent strategizing (books, plans, lists, everything) or feeding (Caroline blames the deaths of her victims on Klaus as well, because she wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him).

The day that she finishes her plans, she beats Stuart twice in a row.

He grins at her bloodily from under her shoe, and when she releases him he wipes away the blood from his nose (she doesn't care—she's feeding regularly and she's got more than enough self-control), leads her to the threshold and sticks out his hand.

"You're ready." He says, and he looks incredibly proud.

She shakes his hand.

When she drops it, his expression sobers. "Don't come back here." He orders, and then he closes the door in her face.

(She gets it. She isn't his friend. She isn't someone who can come by and visit whenever she likes. She was his student and now she isn't. She doesn't need him anymore, and because of that, she is no longer welcome. It's simple. Something that Caroline understands now).

.

Caroline goes to Prague because Rebekah is there. Nearby, at least, living with the Salvatore's and Elena. Caroline purposely doesn't think about how she feels about that personally (mother fucking fury igniting in every single one of her fucking pores) and instead focuses on exactly how she can use this information to her advantage.

Klaus never strayed too far from his sister. Even when she was dead and in a coffin he brought her with him everywhere. It's only logical to assume that if Rebekah is here, then Klaus will be somewhere close by.

So Caroline starts networking. (She stops by Ohio on the way). She may have been hiding from Klaus for a long time but now she's the one who has to find him. And it isn't easy.

She meets a pack of werewolves in Bad Gastein who are happy (if reluctant) to listen to what she has to say, mostly because she tells them upfront she's interested in getting rid of the original hybrid. The same can be said for a group of three vampires, Ellen, Kirsten and Siobhan she meets in Milan. They don't believe she's got a chance in hell, but they're brave enough to give her the information she needs.

She ends up in Naples. There's a strong Mafia presence here, mostly to mask the even stronger vampire presence, and she thinks she can get the information she needs here. She doesn't dye her hair this time, but she does cut it off. Without the extra length her hair isn't as curly, so it falls in soft small curls around her cheeks, just brushing at her shoulders. Naples is pretty gross, she decides early. There's rubbish everywhere and graffiti on everything. People stand around just watching each other (they're more upfront with the staring in Europe, she learnt early). Still, she doesn't stray far from the train stations, which is probably why she gets such a shit snapshot. She skips the bars this time, heading to a night club instead to meet with a witch (a contact that Siobhan set her up with when she left Austria).

She's only angry for a moment that the witch has vanished (she gets a text just as she enters from the witch in question: give up and get out, you're never going to win) when she walks into the night club and comes face to face with Klaus's little brother.

Well, not face to face exactly. He's in the middle of the dance floor, fluorescent lights bouncing off the sweaty bodies. Kol is, in fact, the only one not sweating like a pig as he dances. He looks almost obviously supernatural, completely at ease but surrounded by scantily clad undergrads grinding against him. It's hot here, incredibly hot, and Caroline feels stifled after two seconds inside.

It's quick enough, though that she thinks she might get out without him noticing her arrival.

She takes a step back.

Kol traces a finger along the skin of her bared neck and shoulder, from where he suddenly appears behind her. "Uh-uh, lovely." He brings his hand up to run along the edge of her newly cut hair. It brushes along his fingers and Caroline blinks once, twice. She brings her elbow up to get him in the gut, but she's off, this was a surprise and she should be able to react faster but she doesn't; he catches her and spins her, fastening his hands around her wrists and bringing her flush against him. (Stuart would be so pissed at her). He flashes her a salacious grin.

"It's been a long time since any of us were hunted, sweets." He leans back a little, but keeps his hands where they are and his hips pressed against hers. "If I'm honest with you, I haven't had this much fun since the Renaissance—let me tell you Caroline, merchant ladies do have the most fun."

"Get your hands off me." Caroline orders furiously.

Kol starts dancing—only in this club it's more of a grind than anything else, so Caroline shoves at him. He actually lets her go, with another of his disgusting grins. Two girls immediately try to take her place, draping themselves over him, rubbing their skins against his but he effortlessly shoves them away.

"The truth is Caroline," Kol continues, smirking because he and she both know that she's not running anywhere now that he can't catch her. "Yours is an attitude that I wish more had. If people spent more time acting like you then I think neither myself or any of my siblings would have become so complacent." He smiles. "We're much better now though. We should thank you for that."

Caroline scowls. "Your sister seems pretty complacent still."

Kol flashes another grin at her. "I did hear that you visited my sister and her alleged one true love." Then he sighs. "And Stefan is a bit of disappointment, it turns out." He shrugs. "I try not to think about it." He shudders out with his whole body, like a dog might shake the water off him, only it's like he trying to shed the thought of Stefan and his sister. He rolls his eyes like she understands, like they're just two old pals gossiping, and then sighs. "Anyway, to business, lovely—my brother would like a word."

He doesn't have to specify which brother he's talking about. Caroline tenses immediately, her senses spreading out to make sure that Klaus isn't hidden anywhere in the shadows. She should be better at this, she feels awkward and not comfortable in this space. She's used to fighting in a gym, prepared. In a way this is good because it only proves exactly how unprepared she is to fight Klaus.

She thinks about running now and how long it would take him to catch her.

Kol breaks out into a terrifying smile. He turns to the club and looks straight at the DJ. "One more song then!" he shouts, (the club responds with a enthusiastic shout of agreement) before turning to Caroline leaning forward again. "Go on, lovely." He says, his eyes flashing dangerously—he's excited, elated even. She's beginning to figure out why everyone thinks he's so crazy. "I'll give you a head start." He turns and starts dancing to whatever song the DJ has just chosen.

She doesn't linger to think about how uncannily he'd seen into her head. She turns and runs, speeding out of there. He'll follow her, obviously, but if she can just get to a better fighting ground—somewhere she can fight with all her thoughts with her—then maybe she'll have a fighting chance.

She heads for the train station.

She gets there quickly enough, doesn't hesitate to see if Kol's caught up with her yet or not. He's unpredictable even if you know him, and Caroline doesn't know him. The terrifying reality of the moment is he's probably the most dangerous original to her, because she has no idea how he fights and he has no compulsion to go easy on her. He doesn't have a weird obsession with her, or a perverse chivalry mindset. He's just kind of insane.

She gets on a train—she's not sure which, one of the ones that are leaving just as she arrives—and she suddenly doesn't know what to do with herself. There are only a few people on the train, all of them dodgy looking because it's like one a.m. in the morning and no one smart is on the public train system that late. Two men, she notes—a nasty smelling drunk in the corner and a man dressed like a homeless person sleeping on a bench seat. Two women as well, these two together, giggling and tittering in their short skirts and skimpy shirts—they're clearly gone with the wind as well, slurring their words and audibly laughing at Caroline. She supposes she might look a bit strange, in her clubbing clothes, suddenly lost now that she's on the train.

She isn't given much time to think about that though, because the door to the next carriage opens and Kol saunters through. "Really, Caroline." He says with a sad look, like he's disappointed. "You could have at least made it hard for me."

She steps back, looking for weapons. She could probably pull any of the steadying bars free of the train walls and use that, and there's one of those hammers for breaking the glass in an emergency, but that's about it. Any other weapon on this train carriage is on Caroline's body—the knuckle dusters in her back pocket, the small blade in her ankle boot and the fangs hidden up behind her teeth. Her arms and her legs, her body honed by Stuart is an asset, but then Kol probably has the same amount of physical control over his body. And he's got the Original strength to put behind it all.

He pushes his shoulders back, his eyes dancing in the same scan of the carriage that she's just done. It's like he's getting rid of a crick in his neck, and he then swings his arms around, stretching the muscles. When he catches her annoyed look, he winks at her. "Gotta limber up for things like this, lovely. Wouldn't want to pull anything."

Caroline figures out quickly that he's got that whole 'beat someone up and be smarmy about it' thing that Buffy the Vampire Slayer had going on when that show was going. It's not really her sort of thing (she'd much rather explain entirely why this is the kind of retribution she's delivering was necessary) but she can play along.

"Is it even possible for us to pull muscles?" she asks him, taking the extra time he's given her to again look for ways she could get high ground maybe—or maybe even some wood, they had wood on trains, didn't they? (She knows ordinary stakes don't work on Originals, but according to Stefan—ages ago—one of them has at least stalled Elijah when he'd been trying to kill them).

Kol grins at her. "Only when you doing it right, lovely." He says, then he winks again. She figures from the tone of his voice and the smirk on his face that he's not so much talking about fighting anymore.

She scoffs at him.

"Are you sure you want to do this, pet?" Kol asks, still incredibly civil, even if they are both suddenly squaring off. The four other occupants of the train haven't figured it out yet. Sure, the homeless guy is still asleep—but the two girls are giggling loudly at everything that Kol says (it's the combination of looking the way he does and the accent, Caroline is pretty sure) and the drunk guy is looking at them with a tilted head, like somewhere in his head he recognises that this next bit isn't going to be pretty. "I'm really just here to deliver a message. You could always just do as we ask." He pauses and scans her again, his eyes raking up and down her form. "Of course, it'd be incredibly disappointing. Like I said, you're the most interesting thing that's happened to us in centuries."

Caroline hesitates for a moment, but ultimately decides she needs more time to think. Stalling is the best way to do that. ("The important thing," Stuart says, when he's pinned her to the ground with his thigh, and has a knife over her heart, "is to always know more than your opponent. Even better if he's more powerful than you. You have to know absolutely everything about anything in a fight that's uneven.") "How about you tell me the message and I'll decide how to go from there."

Kol grins, because they both know no matter what his brother has to say, Caroline will be fighting him in a few moments.

"He'd like for you to meet him, lovely." He says. "In Venice. You've got things to discuss."

Caroline scowls at him. "The only thing we'll be discussing is a stake through the heart."

She's seen how weird the Mikaelsons get when family is involved, so it shouldn't surprise her too much to see the smirk slip a little on Kol's features. Not in an outright offended way or anything, just in that way that tells her that even though he was joking moments ago, he's suddenly a little more serious.

His lips are a little tight when he speaks next. "Maybe you're underestimating my brother just a little." He says.

Caroline shakes her head. This is the most unpredictably Mikaelson sure, but now she knows he's got the same weakness they all do. None of them want to lose the only other people that are constant in their lives. It gives her at least a stepping stone to the upper hand. She doesn't have anything like that at the moment. Bonnie and Matt are hidden away. Tyler is strong enough to take care of himself. Daniel is dead. For the moment, Caroline's got nothing to lose.

So she mimics his smirk. "I guess I'll see how I feel when he's dead—make the decision then."

Kol doesn't slip quite as easily as Klaus might have with the threat. He tilts his head to the side, in that crazy dangerous way, and considers her. "Funny." He says. "I always thought I would be the one to kill my brother."

Caroline shrugs. "Maybe one of the other ones." She suggests casually.

Kol launches at her.

In the end it still takes Caroline a little off guard. He's quick and he makes a horrific vicious sound as he moves—but Caroline is fast enough that she just gets out of the way. She moves to where he stood before, turns around to face him where he's landed and sees that he's done what she thought she might do, and pulled one of the standing bars out of its foundation, is now holding it delicately in one hand.

(There are too many distractions on this train—too many. The homeless man wakes up from the noise of Kol's attack and stands immediately, moves to a different carriage. The drunk guy lets out a little cheer, and the two girls start whispering excitedly, watching the curve of Kol's back as he stands).

Caroline focuses only on how Kol is carrying himself. He moves light, like a cat now. He's on his toes, bouncing his weight slightly—like this really is one of the most exciting things that has happened to him in a while. He's leaning forward as well, ready to attack. This isn't any of the particular styles Stuart told her about. Those are practiced and formed. This is almost animalistic in its function, and he watches her like a lion might watch a tiger. Weary and prepared, but confident. He apparently knows that she's had some training. The look in his eye makes her a little proud of herself—to know that an Original can treat her like a very real threat.

"I can see what he sees in you, you know." Kol says, apparently back on the whole banter thing. "My brother."

Caroline wants to roll her eyes, but that would be her first and last mistake. She doesn't take her gaze away from him, and thinks about her attack from her. If she can bring him down with a kick, she could probably break a leg—but she doesn't think he'll stay immobile for the amount of time she'd need. Kol keeps talking.

"One hundred years ago I probably would have made a game of it. It's so much fun stealing Nik's women—he'd always have the biggest tantrums when he discovered their indiscretions. More so when it was me they indiscretioned with." He breaks out in one of his grins. "Probably a side effect of the whole Tatia debacle, but who could blame me. Back then, watching him and Elijah fight over a woman that pathetic was just the highest form of entertainment."

Caroline doesn't have a clue who this Tatia person is, or why Kol is telling her about it. Nor does she give a fuck.

He explains for her anyway, because apparently—in addition to be crazy he's also psychic. "The first doppelganger, lovely." He says slowly, like she should know this already. "She was about as annoying as your Elena is. Well, maybe not that bad."

Caroline desperately fights the urge to smile at that and actually fails. She smirks, because that's hilarious that even one thousand years ago there was a girl who looked like Elena, stealing other people's lives and playing with them. Kol catches her reaction immediately. "You agree with me, do you? See, I don't like comparing anyone to the Salvatores—but back then my brothers were almost that bad. Who would you say is the Stefan Salvatore equivalent?"

She doesn't reply because she's not actually going to stoop to that level. (And Elijah. Obviously).

"Actually," Kol continues. "Best not to go down that road, considering Stefan's now entranced my sister—gives it all a bit of an incestuous tone, doesn't it." He considers that for a moment. "Although," he then says, "I did know the Borgia family last time I was in Italy. Now there was a worrying brother-sister relationship."

Caroline never listened to history class even when Ric was teaching it, so she has no idea what he's talking about. Still, she gets the general gist. Incest. Which is,

"Ew." Caroline says. "That's disgusting. Are you mentally deficient?"

Kol nods enthusiastically. "It's almost a certainty, pet. I think Nik tried to have me tested once, but I'm relatively certain that I ate the examiner."

It's a nasty joke, but the two girls in the background—the drunk ones that Caroline's been trying desperately to ignore—giggle like he's some sort of professional entertainer. They are obviously not listening to what he's really saying (or at least, Caroline hopes not).

Kol hears it and grins, actually relaxing a bit and turning to face them. "Think that's funny do you, love?" He says—Caroline notes immediately that it's a new nickname, one that he hasn't used on her yet. She gets lovely and pet and nothing else, and she wonders if that's intentional or not, and why it even matters—. He swings his gaze back to Caroline. "What do you say we share one, just quickly?"

He glances back at the girl. "What would you say? A? AB positive?"

Caroline propels herself forward, and attacks.

She brings her foot up first, a long wide arc that she intends to hit his head with. He's fast enough to avoid the initial blow, despite his distraction, but he can't avoid the other foot that she brings up to connect solidly with his stomach. Her foot slips in that space between the bottom of his ribs and he flies backwards solidly, slamming into the carriage wall. He drops the metal bar he was holding in his hand, and Caroline retrieves it from the floor.

The two drunk girls scream. Kol lands on his feet.

He stands now on one of the paired train chairs and he looks positively fucking elated. He rubs softly at his stomach, looking like he's trying to catch his breath (or trying to look like that. He's not a very good actor. It's at her expense though). "Good one, darling." He says immediately. "You get the first hit in—I'm actually impressed."

Then he delivers an impossibly fast kick to the side of her face, easy because he's standing so much taller than her. It hurts—like a bitch, actually—but she can't let it get her out of this fight, otherwise she'll be dead. She's blind though, while her eyes try to focus through the automatic tears and her head throbs. She brings the bar up out of instinct, across her front and manages to block the most of his next attack, two quick punches to her shoulders. Only one connects and even that sends her staggering back a bit.

Kol lets out a cackle and reaches for one of the (now suitably terrified) girls who are watching. "Come here, love." He calls, before he rips into her neck.

It's almost an insult that he cares this little about the fight he's having—that he would stop for a snack in the middle—but it gives Caroline time to get her vision to clear. Her lip his bleeding, already mostly healed but the red blur of her own blood is dripping on her chin. Her eye is throbbing like a mother fucker, but it's nothing she can't handle.

As soon as her vision is clear and she's ready again, Kol drops the now motionless body to the ground. The girl's friend is screaming bloody murder and the drunk guy is cowering in the corner swearing over and over again under his breath. He's got blood all over his face and his eyes are alight with an emotion that Caroline can't even identify properly.

He holds out his hands like he's offering her a waltz, and then licks his lips. The blood is smeared on his cheeks and chin and his teeth are bright red when he grins at her. "Come on, Caroline." He says. "Let's dance."

He moves so swiftly it almost is like dancing—and Jesus Christ, there's a chance he actually fits a pirouette in before—he's suddenly on her other side, punching her solidly in the back of the neck. Caroline stumbles forward but has sense enough to kick out behind her, and her hit lands. Her heels gets his knee and she spins around, recovering in time to see him take a couple of steps back. She doesn't waste her time with the upper hand. She rushes him again, lifting the bar that's still in her hands and bringing it down on his collarbone. He crumples then, but he's by no means down for the count. Even on his knees, he brings a hand up and catches the bar when Caroline goes to hit him with it again. Tugging on it roughly jerks her forward and he flips her over his back, his shoulder connecting solidly with her gut before she lands flat on her back.

See, breathing isn't an issue for vampires in so much as being actually required to keep them alive. It does become a problem though, when you realise that the habit of breathing is so hard to break that you just don't bother. It isn't a problem most of the time, except for when fighting like this and there's no way to react.

The shoulder to the gut kicks in this reflex and Caroline gasps for totally unnecessary air. The resulting tunnel vision clears just in time for her to look up and see Kol back on his feet, just as his boot comes down and connects with her ribs. The power behind the kick sends her rolling across the floor, and her head hits the bar of one of the train chairs as she does so.

The friend of the now dead girl is still screaming. Again, instead of pressing his advantage, Kol takes the time to address the humans. "Shut the fuck up, sweetheart." He says to the drunk girl, grabbing her hair and throwing her across the train. She hits the door to the next carriage with her face, but she can't crumple from the pain because Kol is there, pressing her closer to it by her neck. "I'm terribly sorry about your friend, darling." He tells her, pressing a swift ugly kiss to her lips before he rips out her spine.

Caroline attempts to get to her feet while this is on display. Kol doesn't pause in spinning around and punching her in the face with the girls bloody spine, scraping the skins on Caroline's face with impact and sending her reeling back to the ground.

He throws the spine away—in the direction of the drunk man in the corner. (The drunk guy catches it in horror, and then throw it away from him, tears streaming down his cheeks).

Kol does another little dance, before he brings his fists up. "Come on, pet—stand up." He does a couple of Jackie Chan's fake karate moves, sound effects and all while she stands. When she's on her feet, shamed and embarrassed because she should be better than this, he adopts a boxer's pose and grins at her over his clenched hands. "Put 'em up, Caroline—we'll fight as God intended."

(Jesus fucking Christ).

Kol grins.

He jumps up and down on his feet for a bit, like the floor is moving and he's got an audience to please—so Caroline takes advantage of his distraction and kicks at his knee again. She doesn't expect it to work, he's an Original, he's clearly better than her—but he goes down, knees buckling from the force of being pushed backwards.

Caroline doesn't stop to marvel at her luck, presses another swift kick (with heels and everything) right to his face. His head flies back from the hit, and his hand comes around blindly to grab at her hair. His fingers brush the strands and for a minute there's pressure but he lets go and again Caroline doesn't linger to think on this. He pulls his hand away and instead presses it to his nose.

Caroline lifts her fist to bring down another punch to his face—one connects, then another. She tries for a third and her arm stops, caught in his solid grip, iron tight and strong. She thinks this is it, here he'll come back and fucking end her, so she pushes even harder. She is not going to go down without a fight, not now—not after everything. For a stagnant moment, all either of them do is push. Caroline can feel her ground wavering as Kol's superior strength over powers her.

Then Kol's grip collapses and the final punch hits home. He sprawls further than Caroline had anticipated he would and his whole head spins a little, his teeth making a horrific noise as they collide with the metal bar that's still embedded in the carriage.

"You know," he says, spitting his own blood out of his mouth now. "My brother's offer still stands. He wants to meet you. The address is in my jacket."

Caroline kicks him in the ribs this time, and revels in the way he flinches away from it. It looks like the reflex to get away from that kind of an assault isn't just one that she can't get rid of. She kicks him again one more time for good measure. Adrenalin is rushing through her body, a perverse kind of power because that wasn't actually that hard. In fact, that was kind of easy and if that's all it takes to get rid of an Original then she's been worried about nothing. She hardly had to employ any of the techniques that Stuart taught her.

Caroline stands tall and lifts a leg, pressing it to Kol's throat and pushing down. Hard. With her hands she reaches into her jacket and pulls out the concealed stake she's been carrying with her everywhere lately.

"This will only work for one of you, and unfortunately it's got your brother's name on it." She snarls, flicking her hair over her shoulder and basking in the sheer bliss that marks her victory. "I guess today's your lucky day."

Kol, of course, starts chuckling. And Caroline's always been a curious thing—she can't stand it when people laugh at her and she doesn't know why—so she lets up the pressure on his throat.

"You know," he says, that manic grin on his face. "You really didn't disappoint me, lovely. Bravah—really."

Caroline scowls and brings her foot down, this time with enough force to snap the bones that are keeping him conscious. That'll keep him down long enough for him to stop being a problem. And then, hopefully when he woke up, the great Kol Mikaelson would retreat for a bit, to lick his wounds. Defeated by a baby vampire—he'd never live that down.

She'd done it. She'd defeated an Original. The resulting rush of feelings has Caroline smiling as crazily as Kol had a couple of moments ago. She feels light, unstoppable—and finally, finally capable of succeeding at her mission. This isn't blind anger now. This is something she can do. This is something she will do.

Caroline bends over and twists Kol's motionless body, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out the slip of paper that he had said would be there.

It's an address in Venice, she assumes. That sounds like Klaus didn't it? He always liked the famous cities. She tucks the paper into her pocket and straightens. Only then does she really register the snuffled cries of the drunk man on the train—the only other survivor of tonight.

She looks right at him, where he's snivelling and sobbing like a coward.

"If you're still here when he wakes up, he'll rip out your intestines and drink them while you watch." She says with a smile.

Then she pulls out her phone and pulls up the train schedule. She's got a place to be and a hybrid to kill. (A life to avenge).

.

.

/Part Four/

"If I should call you up if, invest a dime and you say you belong to me and ease my mind imagine how to world would be so very fine,

so happy together,"

— The Turtles

.

.

There's not much to do in Venice if not lose yourself. The twisted winding alleys are confusing, Caroline (who knows Italian mostly) still can't speak it fast enough as the locals, and all directions she asks for are lost in a whirlwind of words and expressive hand gestures. She considers perhaps, climbing to one of the tall buildings and navigating her way on the rooves, but that feels a little too dramatic for her tastes—kind of too much like an Indiana Jones film for it to allowed.

She's still thrumming on the energy of defeating Kol. His blood is still on her fists (caked and crusty—she hasn't found a place to wash it off yet). It sends an odd thrill down her spine every time it catches her eye because it means that this is possible. This is something she can do, she can defeat Klaus and live her life, unhindered, unhunted for as long as she likes. She can avenge Daniel, and Bonnie and Matt, and even Tyler and her own life. It's fuel for her, keeps her buzzing with excitement. She can't sit still, she needs to get it out. She needs this to be done.

She doesn't keep still on the train, so it's good that the trip only takes her a few hours. She's still wearing her clothes from the club, she looks so much a mess that she's scared other people out of the carriage she shares with them, and she can't stop her knees bouncing with anticipation. She twists Daniel's engagement ring around her finger and tries to think about the scenery, thinks about what she'll do when this is over.

(She doesn't have any idea what she'll do when this is over. She's effectively burned the bridge with Elena and the Salvatores—good riddance, she thinks—and Bonnie and Matt have moved on with their lives. Tyler will always be around, but they're not good together for too long. She should probably get used to a solitary existence. And track down her mother).

(She really doesn't like the sound of that. By herself, forever?)

She doesn't get much time to think of it, because the train stops—people flee from her path—and she ventures into the streets of Venice.

She tries to focus on landmarks as she makes her way through the streets. The shops are closed, but from behind the darkened windows, frightening masks grin at her, like they're glad she's here. She focuses on the light feeling of her victory, instead of their ominous expressions. Most of the restaurants are closed as well, she notes as she ventures further into the maze of streets. And there are a steadily declining number of people walking around. When she finds herself totally alone, she realises that taking her somewhere uncrowded was probably Klaus's intention.

It's quiet in Venice. There's no sound of cars to mask the noise her feet make as she walks down the cobblestone streets. There's frost in the corners, and pigeons sleeping in all the crevices on the taller walls.

It's because of the silence that she hears the music from exactly three streets away.

It's violins or something, maybe a cello or two (come on, ask someone who was in the marching band, right?) but she doesn't really care about the instruments themselves. This is undoubtedly something that Klaus would have thought up.

Sure enough, she round three more corners (two rights and a left) and there's Klaus, sitting at a table covered in a white cloth, red napkins, lit candles and what is undoubtedly very expensive wine. He's facing where she entered and there's an empty seat opposite to him. And seriously, (seriously), he has a string quartet playing slow music to the left—and a mother fucking gondola (gondolier et al) standing ready to go.

"Are you serious?" She demands, as she finally brings her eyes up to look at him.

He's wearing a suit. A grey one, with a pinstriped shirt underneath his jacket. A small, neat back bow tie is around his neck, he's got silver cufflinks in and her smirking at her like she's the greatest thing he's ever wanted to see. (And Caroline's not a liar, not really. She's never hated Klaus because he's seriously attractive and British. She hates him because he ruined her life. And that what she needs to focus on right now).

He's standing—but he was sitting when she walked in. He's lifted his arms as if to offer the whole scene to here as a gift.

He only seems more amused by her question, and he bows his head a little bit.

"Dramatic I know," he allows (Jesus his voice wasn't always this normal was it?). "But you have to permit me sweetheart. I haven't seen you in years."

She glares at him and bites back her automatic angry reply. ("Who's fault is that?" "You did this to me, asshole," "please kindly fuck off and die"). Instead she points her head right at the still playing musicians.

"How much are you paying them?" she asks.

Klaus grins. "They're working pro-bono, love." He says, the smirk pulling at his lips as he speaks.

Compelled, then. Caroline grimaces a bit as she looks at them and then looks away, fixes Klaus with a dry expression. "Romantic."

He just grins wider. She doesn't know what to say to stall anymore, but she's relatively sure that he'll keep conversation going. She shifts her focus to the space and maps it out the same way she did when she was fighting his brother. The walls are uneven—she can use the gaps in the bricks as foot holds if she needs. The gondolier is holding a paddle that could work as a weapon and a temporary stake if she needs to. Any of the wooden instruments would also work, if only for a moment. There's the table—but it's made of metal. Snapping a leg off the table or any other the chair would give her a weapon to attack with. Not deadly, no—but a good hit to the head would daze anyone. The wine is probably vervain-ed (Klaus always prepared for everything) so she should throw that into the canal as soon as possible.

There's a couple of cutlery knives on the table as well, as a couple of forks—but that is probably the end of her limited weapon supply.

That doesn't bother her. She's here for a purpose. She's not interested in his perverse form of foreplay, not when she's worked so hard to get here.

Stolen blood pumps through her veins. She feels the rush of adrenalin she felt when fighting Kol, but it's stronger now—so much worse, so much better than before. She's ready for this to happen.

She clenches her fists and slips her left foot back a little, getting ready for the fight.

Klaus notices, and immediately lifts his hands, like she aiming a gun at him. He offers her him open palms sincerely, like he really means her no harm. (Hah).

"Now Caroline," he says slowly, carefully—but still fucking smiling. "Can't we be civil about this?"

She shrugs her shoulders, buzzing, thrumming waiting for it all to start. "I don't know. How about you close your eyes and wish really hard?"

Klaus sighs. Caroline throws one of the chairs at him.

He dodges it swiftly, and continues to smile at her. She tries again, this time with a violin from the musician closest to her (who now looks like he has no idea what to do without the instrument in his hand) and throws that at him as well. Again, he moves out of the way like it's moving it's moving through the air in slow motion or something.

"Caroline please." He says casually.

Caroline snatches the second violin. She doesn't throw this one, just breaks it across her knee and tosses the fat end away. She holds the end with all the (now snapped) strings out in front of her, daring him to start attacking her.

He doesn't. He just sighs again. "That's a Stradivarius, you know." He sounds a little pained, still smiling but his eyes watching the violin sadly.

Caroline tries not to let that distract her, but the knowledge that she just snapped a priceless violin in half does get to her a little bit. There are people in the world who would die for those things, you know. She takes a millisecond to glance down at the half she tossed to the ground, and Klaus (who has been doing this for hundreds of years) knows when to spot a weakness.

He suddenly stands in front of her, snatching the violin out of her hands. "Don't worry. I'll get you another." He says.

Caroline kind of wants to stab him, but she's suddenly lost her stabbing implement. She instead brings a foot out, catches him around the ankle and pulls forward. It takes him off guard—she thinks? — and he falls forward a little. Caroline could use the opportunity to hit him again, but she's too close, too exposed for a move like that now. Instead, she grabs his shoulders in his distraction and shoves him away from her.

He doesn't go too far, catching his footing quickly, so Caroline scoots away, stepping backward frantically and desperately trying to create space between the two of them. She moves close enough to the canal that she slips a little bit, her foot wobbling before she too, catches her balance.

Klaus doesn't seem to mind that she shoved him. He's watching her closely. "Watch the water there, love." He warns. "Falling in would be," he pauses and makes a face. "Uncomfortable."

(The water doesn't look that dirty at all. And it's not that cold, even though it's the middle of the night. Also, she's a mother fucking vampire. She can handle the wet).

She tells him as much, and is infuriated when he chuckles. "Not what I meant, love—but I'm sure you're right, and I have no doubts that you can handle yourself."

She narrows her eyes at him and steels herself. Okay. ("Know who you're fighting and where you're fighting them. That's all you need—that and the strength the follow through." Stuart said). The bastard just sounds so fucking patronising that she's finding it a little difficult to focus.

She lets her middle finger feel the smooth metal of the ring around her ring finger, twists it until the gem is pressing solidly into her flesh and fucking focuses. (She thinks of how Daniel said good morning and the kisses they'd share like he'd never get enough of her. She is doing this for him).

More than that though, she thinks of the life she should have had. Of Caroline Forbes the seventeen year old who should be in her twenties by now. She is doing this for her.

She runs at him, and gets a hand around his neck, slamming him back against the wall of the small square. He's not really fighting her (probably his perverse desire to remain civil about this) so she can maintain it for a moment. She pulls him close to her and then shoves him back against the wall again, his head cracking on the stone.

He shoves her away. "Easy." He says now, his eyes alight with what looks to be a combination of anger and amusement. Maybe frustration. "This is Venice, love."

"Don't care." She says shortly, rushing him to get another punch in.

He takes the hit, but this time he catches her wrist when she's pulling away. He doesn't pull her close, but he does manage to catch her other wrist and hold her still for a moment.

"Venice is an architectural gem." He tells her, like Ric would have if he were still around. Just another casualty of Klaus's war.

Caroline kicks at his knee, misses as he deflects but lands the force on his thigh. He crumples a bit, but keeps his grip tight and doesn't let her go. She struggles against him for another moment. She talks through clenched teeth. "You chose the location, and I found you. Anything else I don't care about."

She rips one hand out of his grasp and for a moment she thinks she's free, but she just kind of spins before he catches her again, now with her back facing him. He leans forward and whispers in her ear.

"I would have shown you it all." He says softly. "I still will, if you let me."

His voice travels down her spine with a shiver and she doesn't even remotely know how to respond to that. She thinks of that speech he gave her—the one she's never allowed herself to think about. Genuine beauty and all the places in the world he said he take her to. She thinks about the drawing of him—that she assumes was lost when he destroyed her family home.

(I'll wait for you?)

She shoves him back with a raised foot and an elbow, and then she is free. She doesn't fool herself into ignoring the feeling of him letting her go, his hands releasing her wrists—she just doesn't linger on that thought.

In her confusion, there's not much she can do but stumble forward. She's heading for the water again and even though she can definitely handle it, she knows for sure that the water will be a hindrance—if she has to fight with wet clothes then she'll not be a quick as she would be if she were totally dry.

She changes direction when she can and manages to stay away from it. When she turns, recovered, Klaus is watching her curiously, an odd expression she doesn't even want to begin to characterise on his face.

She rushes him again, because she can't linger to think about this. She can't give him time to strategise and figure out how to beat her. Not if she wants to survive this encounter.

He catches her again, just as easily.

"Please stop this Caroline." He asks her. "There are things you and I need to speak about."

She shoves at his chest. "I don't want to discuss anything with you." She snarls furiously, while her hits land essentially ineffective.

He releases her again and this time they're both closer to the water, and she's off. She can't help it and even though she has time to see it coming, she goes flying off the edge of the street and into the water.

She expects it to be cold. She expects it to be uncomfortable and to taste disgusting and smell worse.

She doesn't expect it to fucking burn.

But it does. The water singes at her skin, everywhere, all over. (The scalp of her head, underneath her fingernails, inside her ears, in between her toes). She can't even help herself, screaming in surprise even underwater—and then it's in her mouth and down her throat and she's choking on it even if she doesn't need to breath. She spasms, trying to escape the pain as it bites and claws at her, acidic and searing.

A strong arm wraps around her, under her arms and pushes (not pulls?) her out of the water, shoving her back onto the side of the street.

Caroline can't think, can't do anything but scream as she pushes at her own clothes. They're soaked in the water—the what the fuck was that? — and it still burns her skin. She keeps her eyes closed because her eyelids are swollen, she can feel it already. Her skin is raw and hot and she's crying, she thinks—because that's the only water that isn't searing her skin away.

There's a hand slapping at her face, the action almost a caress after the screaming hurt of the whatever had happened to that water.

Then a voice. "Caroline. Come on, sweets, up and at 'em. Don't disappoint me now, lovely."

She blinks her eyes open. The healing is doing its thing and she can move her eyelids now, but the water in her clothes is still soaking through. The water has hurt her eyes as well and even though they too are healing themselves, she can't focus on whoever it is that's slapping her.

She hears Klaus's voice—distinct. He's angry now, and tense. She's not sure what changed his demeanour but right now she doesn't care. She's exposed and she's probably about to die, but she can't make herself move because it hurts so fucking much.

She feels hands at her feet. They group at her shoes, tighten the water around her feet and she flinches away from the pain, whimpering like a little bitch.

"Fuck," she hears the first voice say— "Nik, come on. You know how to deal with this."

"Don't." She hears Klaus say now.

"Fuck you, brother."

She decides that it's Kol when she feels a hand around her neck. Oddly poetic, she thinks. Strange that he should catch up with them so quickly, though. He grips under her neck and she can't move to fight him off because her body just won't. Her skin is burned away, her clothes are stuck to her flesh and this is probably better in the long run right?

(Stuart would be so pissed at her, she thinks as Kol snaps her neck).

.

She wakes up in a hotel room, and Katherine Pierce is sitting in the corner, her hands cuffed to the wall and a scowl on her face.

(This is only the first of many, many surprises that follow).

Caroline tenses immediately, testing her mobility. But she's not strapped down or restrained at all. She's just lying in a bed, in the middle of a really posh room, lavish and wide—the bed is a king or something and she barely takes up a quarter of it. She checks her wrists for anything, but finds nothing.

She turns to Katherine. "Where are we?" She demanded.

Katherine didn't reply, didn't even open her mouth. In fact, the only indication that she'd heard was the narrowing of her eyes—an impossibly hateful glare that has no business being there. (What the fuck has she ever done to Katherine that the bitch didn't totally deserve?)

Caroline tries again. "What's going on?"

Again nothing. Nothing audible, at least. Katherine rolls her eyes, flicks her hair over her shoulder and turns her head, not looking at Caroline again. She keeps her lips resolutely shut.

And Caroline has never known Katherine Pierce to be anything other than a loud mouthed bitch, so she understandably starts getting a little worried.

Obviously not getting any answers from her maker in the corner, Caroline moves to check the room out again. There's a process, her hazy mind brings up when it all comes back to her. Klaus has her, she assumes—or Kol, even if he shouldn't have been able to catch up with her this fast. She needs to find out exactly what's going on and then figure out exactly how to get back on top of it.

She needs to find an advantage.

She looks at everything, cataloguing it. The walls are plaster, but there's something stronger in there reinforcing it. From her taps, she assumes it a metal of some kind—there's no sound of hollow wood. The bed's frame is metal as well, as is the table in the corner. The wardrobe is some sort of strong-ish plastic, and there are two large mirrors decorating them. The door is metal as well.

Well, it's not like she expected them to provide her with a stake or anything. But this is kind of ridiculous.

She glances at Katherine again. They seem to be in the same boat, both of them prisoners. She moves closer to her, and reaches for the shackles around Katherine's wrists. She's sent back almost immediately, when contact with the metal burns her still delicate skin.

She hisses. "Jeez, what the fuck?" Her voice sounds too loud in the silence, especially since Katherine refuses to talk for no apparent reason.

Katherine regards her with a look that is coolly sarcastic and annoying, even totally silent.

She needs more information than what she's got so far. The burn on her finger (rapidly healing, even now) reminds her of the acidic water she'd fallen into—and she flinches from the memory but it does make her realise that a little more personal investigation might be required.

She'd gone to fight with Klaus in the clothes she'd fought Kol in. The ones she'd worn to meet the witch at the club back in Naples.

She's wearing grey sweatpants and a hoodie now.

(Which, even if it means that someone's changed her while she was sleeping, isn't even okay on a fashion level, like Jesus, really?)

Caroline focuses more on the other part though—the part where someone's clearly changed her clothes while she was unconscious—after Kol has broken her neck. (Which doesn't even make sense, he should want revenge shouldn't he? Why is she still even alive?)

It is that fact, in the end, that prompts her to start screaming. She's not dead, not yet, and there must be a reason for that. Surely keeping her alive long enough for her to heal means that they won't kill her if she demands some answers?

She stalks to the door, grabs the door handle (she's already tried it once; locked), and goes a little bit crazy. She twists and twists even though she knows the door isn't going to open. It mostly just makes a lot of noise.

"OI!" She shouts, too loudly. "WHAT THE—?"

And then that's all she has time to get out before the door handle gives, it presses open violent from the pressure she's put to it and she comes face to face with Klaus.

"Feeling better, love?" He asks, eyes wide and hopeful, a pleasant little smile on his face.

She stumbles back, still a little disorientated and so not with the upper hand she needs to have this fight. At the canal, before the water, maybe she had a chance. Not here.

She takes stock. He's wearing his normal clothes now, a grey long sleeved tee and some dark jeans. His necklace hangs out of his shirt, his hair is closely cropped and the smile on his face looks like it's just for her.

(She looks away).

It turns into a glance at Katherine, and then she's backing away in another direction. She doesn't know what's going on at all. Not why she's alive, not why Katherine's suddenly a mute or why Klaus is still looking at her like he did all those years ago.

She can't afford to have any more blind spots. Not right now. She moves so she can see everything, her back facing the cornered walls.

"What the hell is going on?" She demands again, this time looking to Klaus and resolving to only see the monster.

Klaus grimaces a little. "You and I need to have a chat, love."

.

"No fucking way."

"Caroline—I understand on some level that you blame me for everything that you've been through. I would like to understand further, however. So why don't you take a seat and explain."

.

"The canals were a particularly vicious design of my father's." Klaus explains once he's got her seated opposite him. He's watching her closely, and seems to have accepted that even sitting, Caroline is not going to relax. Not here. Not now. "Not only do the people poison the water with vervain most mornings, but they painted the walls of the canals with the stuff."

"More than that," he continues. "There are weighted bags of the stuff nailed every couple of metres down every canal. Left there to ferment, I suppose. The venetians never were fond of us."

Caroline has never felt vervain that bad—but then again, she's never had it in every crevice of her body. Without it, after that experience, her skin feels light and soft—even if she's still a bit raw.

"So you thought you'd take me home and have a play then, right? What girl had to die for these clothes?"

"They're Rebekah's actually." Klaus says lightly, like he doesn't even care that she's been rude. Caroline can't help but dwell on the fact that she's wearing Rebekah Mikaelson's clothes and she shudders, wanting to get them off as soon as possible. She pushes the thought away.

"So then it was just a pervert thing. Couldn't get me conscious so you took what you could get?"

Klaus purses his lips and doesn't answer her, mostly because the door opens before he can and his little brother walks inside. Kol is smirking and looks to be in incredible spirits, even if she'd snapped his neck only hours ago.

He's clearly heard everything from outside.

"Don't worry, sweets." Kol coos, without any other kind of apology for his presence. "We had one of the Miss Pierce strip you of your wet things. Your virtue remains intact." He gives her a once over. "Well, however intact it was." He runs his tongue across his teeth and grins.

Caroline glances back at Katherine, disconcertingly silent and still behind her, still stuck to the wall. She feels about as comfortable with that as she does wearing Rebekah's clothes.

She turns back to Kol with narrows eyes. A glance at Klaus tells her that he's not going to say anything for the moment.

"Sorry about your neck," Kol says with an almost helpless shrug (it would be helpless if he looked remotely apologetic about it. As it is, he just looked pretty amused). "I figured it was only fair. You snap my neck, I snap yours. Tit for tat and all that." His eyes flash a little dangerously. He then glances at his older brother. "All part of the plan, though, in the end."

Caroline stiffens a little and then suddenly everything slots into place.

Right.

Of course she hadn't beaten Kol.

Of course that defeat was just another part of Klaus's game.

(She keeps forgetting, despite everything, that these vampires have been around for a long time and fighting for their lives even longer. This is Klaus, who sends vampires ages older than her running for the hills with just the mention of his name. This is Kol, who has myths and legends about him and his crazy scattered across the globe).

(This is Caroline. She's got no friends left and a dead fiancé).

"I have to say though," Kol keeps on talking. "It was an honour losing to you, Miss Forbes. We'll have to spar again soon."

He's mocking her. Like she's a game, a practice session for something far more threatening than her. This is humiliating, and embarrassing.

"Time to go now, Kol." Klaus's voice says quietly. The door clicks shut behind him.

She can't help but wonder if that was Klaus's whole plan all along. Bring every part of her down with her attempt to kill him.

Hot tears pool in her eyes (because yes, if there's a time for her whole reality to come crashing down then sure, why not now?) and of course—of fucking course Klaus notices immediately.

"You all seem to forget that we've been around a long time, Caroline." He says slowly. "I was born into a time when in order to survive, I had to justify my worth to my own family."

Caroline swallows thickly, feels incredibly shattered and defeated and really, really fucking angry.

"Who are you proving yourself to now?" she says cuttingly, viciously. Her voice is wrecked and she must look an absolute mess but she doesn't give a flying fuck. "This fucking game you've trapped me in—what are you justifying?—what do you want?"

She doesn't give him time to respond. She pushes herself to her feet, glaring down at him.

"No wonder your mother didn't want you." She shouts at him. "No one does—no one wants you here, not even your own family."

(Now she's going to make him angry. So angry that he shoves his hand into her chest and rips out her heart, completing the list of all the other things that have been stolen from her. Her hope, her strength, her father, her mother, her friends, her spirit).

He doesn't disappoint. (Mostly).

His mood swing kicks in faster than she thought it would and he leaps from his seat and suddenly has her pressed violently against the wall.

"My mother was a whore who couldn't keep her legs shut." He hisses in her ear. "My father was a monster who would rather kill me than think about his wife's indiscretions." He lowers his voice just a little. "Your mother is a woman who will never accept you for what you are and your father was so disgusted by you that he chose death to avoid your reality. We're all fucked here, aren't we love?"

The words hit home and Caroline feels angry—so fucking angry that she can't help it. She swings around, brings a fists up and solidly, hard—punches Klaus fucking Mikaelson in the face.

"Fuck you." She sobs out, trying not to think about her mother or her father (when her mother found out she was a vampire and when her father died to get away from her).

"Family is wrong and it's sick and it's all we've got, Caroline." Klaus snarls. "Don't you dare try and judge something you can't understand."

(Her punch doesn't look to have affected him much, so she tries again).

The hit lands and he stumbles back a little. (Katherine is watching the whole thing from the sidelines, eyes wide and a smirk on her face).

"You took my family from me." Caroline screams at him. "You're the reason they're gone."

"Am I?"

Caroline is all ready to go for another hit at this point—but his words stop her in her tracks. She hadn't been expecting any sort of dispute to this. Of course it's his fault—he's the one who made her run.

"Think about it Caroline." Klaus says, calm again now. "Who is it that brought their issues into your small town life? The girl who entranced both the Salvatores and brought this storm over your head? Elena? Even then—you still had your family. But then who was it that used you—used you as a fucking pawn in her romantic games—and turned you into the thing that sent your family from you? The monster that they fucking reviled?"

Caroline's head is kind of spinning, connecting the dots. She recognizes on some level that she's being manipulated but she doesn't care because he makes a real, real kind of sense and the person he's talking about—the one that made her a vampire and cut her off from the only people who were supposed to love her unconditionally—

Well, she's handcuffed to the wall about two metres away.

Katherine's smirk is gone now. Her alarmed gaze switches from Klaus to Caroline for one moment, before she starts struggling against the cuffs around her wrists. They burn her the same way that they burned Caroline but she doesn't seem to notice. She doesn't even hesitate, just keeps trying to pull herself free.

"You want revenge, Caroline." Klaus says. "Revenge against me, because you think that I ruined your life. I'm nothing more than your convenient scapegoat, Caroline. But I've done it for you—here it is. Your chance at absolution."

He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a stake, holding it out to her.

"Go ahead, love." He says, the corners of his lips tilting at the sides. "Avenge Caroline Forbes."

.

The wood is heavy in her palm, scratching and uneven. She can feel it vividly—the exact spot where it meets her skin. Everything else—absolutely everything else—just feels incredibly numb.

Katherine's eyes are the same as Elena's.

.

She's still not talking. She's got her lips sealed shut, probably compulsion, Caroline thinks errantly. But her eyes are wide and she's shaking her head. Even if she could talk, Caroline knows that begging wouldn't stop her now.

It'd be a nice thing to hear though—especially since this is Katherine Pierce, who terrorised her and manipulated her and turned her into a fucking vampire.

"Why can't she talk?" Caroline checks.

"Because anything and everything that Katherine Pierce could say only further pollutes the world," Klaus sneers. "Also, she pissed me off about five hundred years ago, and I had some revenge of my own to work on." He glances as Caroline now. "Would you like her to speak, love?"

Caroline is too focused one Katherine to notice the love thing (kind of, mostly) and she just nods her head.

Klaus turns to Katherine. "Why don't you give us your thoughts, Katherine?" He says with a smirk. "Go on, talk as much as you like. I know you're dying for the chance."

Katherine exhales like a gag has been pulled from her lips and instantly she's looking at Caroline, shaking her head more.

"Caroline—Caroline, don't. Please."

This is all so fucked up, Caroline thinks. Damon is with Elena and Stefan's with Rebekah. Katherine is on her knees begging for her life. Bonnie's married, Matt has a life of his own.

Daniel's dead.

Katherine keeps talking. "Klaus is the reason I turned, Caroline." She says. "He's the reason I'm a vampire—he made me. That's why I was even around to turn you."

Caroline hesitates.

Klaus doesn't. "But Mikael turned me." He turns to Caroline with a big smirk. "Fraid you can't hunt him down though, because I killed him, a while back. Would you like to instead kill the witch who gave him the spell? — oh, but I forget, she's dead as well. How far back does this line have to go, Caroline?"

She frowns.

Fuck, her head hurts.

Klaus keeps talking. "I am not responsible for your life Caroline. I never was. I wanted to be—I wanted to take you around the world and show you everything there was—but you didn't let me. You went to Arizona and California—Brazil, Singapore—and I left you alone."

Caroline turns to face him fully, her grip tightens on the stake he's given her. "You didn't know—we were good, we hid."

Klaus shakes his head a little sadly.

"Claire Foster. Bethany and Max and Tom."

Caroline doesn't believe it. "Then you figured it out after. You would have come if you knew."

"You know I'm telling the truth Caroline, because you knew I was there. It's why you left California, isn't it? You knew I was there — you felt me."

Caroline remembers the creeping skin on the back of her neck that day, right before she left work early and headed home to screw Tyler on their couch, and shudders. She clenches her teeth and doesn't answer.

But if he knew where she was in California then he must have known where she was after that.

Daniel and the mugger flash through her mind and Klaus reads it immediately. He looks at her hand. Her left hand.

"I'm sorry about Daniel." He says. (She's glad he doesn't call her any of his names for the moment. On top of the way she normally feels about his nicknames, Daniel isn't something he can ruin by including himself in the drama. Daniel is exclusively hers to remember).

Caroline seizes up. She wasn't expecting that, not in the slightest. The ring is still bright on her finger (she imagines how horrible it would have been if she'd lost it at the bottom of the canal—she would have searched for it though. Swum for hours if she had to) pressing against the stake in her hand.

"I had nothing to do with it, I swear Caroline." He says immediately. "I would have stopped it, I would have saved him if I could—"

She shakes her head and interrupts him. "Don't lie." She snaps. "You would have let him die. You probably did."

Klaus's mouth shuts and he considers it for a moment. He pauses for a moment. And then: "I won't deny that I didn't like him. I've not been particularly subtle about how I feel about you, but he was human and you had no plans to change him. I told you I would wait."

Caroline doesn't even know what to say to that. The text is still burned into her mind (I'll wait for you), even after all this time. It's confusing and it's annoying and she pushes it out of her head again.

Klaus walks closer to her.

"I did not kill your fiancé, Caroline. I did not order someone too, nor did I have any knowledge of any intent on his life. I had nothing to do with it." He says it sincerely, focusing so closely on her that he could very well be looking right into her soul.

She shakes her head, mostly so she can break the eye contact.

"I don't believe you." She says, closing her eyes and absolutely refusing to let doubt seep in through the cracks.

Klaus shrugs. "I never held dispute with you, sweetheart. Why go after you when Elena and the Salvatores were so much worse at hiding?—my sister is living with the people that stabbed me and locked me in a box. There's a bigger disputes than the one I held with you or Tyler, or Bonnie and Matt."

"This is the weirdest kind of foreplay I have ever seen." Katherine says viciously. "Can't you just get it over with an fuck already?"

Klaus turns his head to her and the look on his face is enough to have to shut her mouth. Klaus smiles coolly. "What do you think Caroline?" He says. "Get it over with and stab her—kill her. Take your revenge."

Caroline stares at the stake in her hand.

Klaus keeps talking.

"You make the decision, Caroline. You either take revenge on someone who played perhaps a part in what your life has become, or you don't. Choose now."

.

The stake clutters to the floor.

(Katherine smirks. "I always knew you never had the guts to do anything like this, Jesus Christ you're just going to fall in line with this asshol—")

Klaus silences her.

.

She can't breathe. Her mind is spinning, too many thoughts there to keep it straight. She can't think or move or begin to figure out what she's just done, what decision she's just made (other than sparing Katherine fucking Petrova's life). (They all knew it was much, much bigger than that).

.

He steps forward and cups her head in his hands.

"You are strong, Caroline Forbes. And beautiful and strong and full of light and there was a time when you let absolutely everyone see it. No one can take that from you—not if you don't let them."

She blinks once.

Twice.

Klaus licks his lips. "There are things I would like to show you, Caroline. Things in this world that you haven't seen yet because other's didn't let you. I was one of them. I'd like to apologise for my part in that, right now."

He steps back, drops his hands from her face and watches her for a moment.

(A billion things run through her mind. Stuart would be disappointed, but she wasn't his student any more. Elena would be annoyed, but she was so out of Caroline's life now that she can't begin to express it. Damon would laugh, Stefan would judge—Caroline would like to hit them both in the face. Her father would be furious. Her mother would be as well. Bonnie would think she's an idiot, Tyler would think she's joking and Matt wouldn't begin to understand any of it).

(Daniel would tell her to do everything she ever could in the world, and then kiss her silly under the Brazilian sun).

She twists Daniel's ring around her finger slightly, and glances down at the hand that Klaus is now extending to her.

"I'm not going to tear apart the world with you." She tells him stonily.

Klaus smiles. "I'm never asked you to, love."

.

(She takes his hand).

.

.

/fin/

**Author's Note:**

> My essential plan was always this kind of ending in regards to the story because I honestly believe that as far as a person can stray from themselves, they'll stick to the same morals in the end. Caroline Forbes goes through a lot of shit at my sadistic hand, and I needed her to come out at the end of the story making her own decisions, doing because she wants to and disregarding all the other people who have thus far controlled her decisions.
> 
> The Klaroline itself is subjective—you guys can assume what happens next, because I'm not even completely sure myself. As far as I'm concerned, Klaus and Caroline are NOT together at this point. I honestly believe that Klaus is better around Caroline, but I don't believe that he'll ever be a good guy—and Caroline needs to come to terms with that, especially in the show. It's probably what makes this pairing so interesting to me.
> 
> In the interest of full disclosure, I kind of fell in love with my own OC in this story. And I know that Daniel became a heavy overtone for this story, but again, I honestly believe that Caroline needed to grow up herself a little, before she could even begin to compete with Klaus.
> 
> Regarding the fight with Kol, I know a lot of you wanted her to have actually beaten him. So many of you, in fact, that I considered changing it. Unfortunately, it was always part of my plan to keep a heavy emphasis of the strength of older vampires versus younger vampires (because those plot holes on the show are the most annoying to me—what are the Salvatores, fucking invincible?) so I ultimately decided to go with my original plan.
> 
> Klaus is difficult to write, so be gentle with me.


End file.
